A 2:1 in B2B blogging
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Tips for successful blogging abound, but most seem to relate to b2c. I know that a lot of our readers are from other businesses, and for me the b2c guidelines often miss the mark. So I was pleased to spot this "Eight tips for successful B2B blogs" posting over on Search Engine Land. And since a lot of our business readers also have their own b2b blogs, I thought I'd share it here. If nothing else, it's a useful way of benchmarking your current performance:
(Don't forget to check out Search Engine Land's original posting where they go into more detail about each of these tips.)
- "Post regularly, only when you have something meaningful to offer". It feels like we fall down horribly on the former, with our fits-and-starts mode of blogging, but actually we do average about 2 postings a month so perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. And I hope that we pick up points on the latter (6/10).
- "Incorporate images and other media". Been getting a bit better at this with all the Slideshares and gratuitous pictures of Bob Geldof (7/10).
- "Incorporate humor". Well, we try (8/10).
- "Be authentic". Is this conversational enough for ya? (9/10)
- "Be original". I'll admit that we come and go on this. Sometimes, we're really breaking new ground; sometimes we get all bee-in-the-bonnet thought-leaderish; sometimes, I know, we just tell you stuff about us. Hope you don't mind this schizophrenic approach (6/10).
- "Don't blatantly promote your stuff". I know that we score badly on this. In my defence, at least I always say upfront "this is a press release", so you can ignore it should you wish to keep your heart & mind pure. And actually, lots of readers said nice things about those social media news releases I was trialling late last year so perhaps this isn't quite the cardinal sin it's painted to be (4/10)
- "Create a code of conduct". This is the only with which I slightly disagree; I don't want to dictate to our readers the appropriate way to join our conversations, or insist on a precise citation format. If "posting a code of conduct will tell readers a lot about you and your company", perhaps I'm telling you that we're a little more chilled, nay, subsersive, than that - or perhaps it's because our readers, by and large, are the sort of early blogging adopters who know what they're about, and we don't need to patronise them with a code of conduct (0/10).
- "Stay focused". No doubt that we do that, all right. I would guess that virtually every All My Eye posting contains one of the following word stems: publish*, scholar*, informat*, librar*, data*. (Except the chicken one, I grant you) (8/10).
(Don't forget to check out Search Engine Land's original posting where they go into more detail about each of these tips.)
posted by Charlie Rapple at 10:50 am
Have you heard the one about Moses and the subversive knitting Weebles?
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Every now and then I come across some quite silly article titles on IngentaConnect that cause me to stop and re-consider my inbuilt expectation that science is only carried out in the pursuit of high-minded noble ideals.
Some of my favourite examples over the years include Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, Blind Ducks in Borneo, and Weeble Wobbles: Resilience Within the Psychoanalytic Situation (this one even had follow-up articles, What Is A Weeble Anyway, And What Is A Wobble, Too? and "Wobbly Weebles" and Resilience: Some Additional Thoughts). And of course we've suddenly uncovered a wealth of them since we came to host the Annals of Improbable Research ("A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" is certainly one I'll be taking home for further study).
The one that has caught my attention today, though, doesn't have the most immediately entertaining of titles (Biblical Entheogens: a speculative hypothesis). But perhaps I would have found it more noteworthy if I had at some point learnt the definition of
It's particularly interesting to compare this to the Weeble examples I cited above. In that case, a controversial article was followed by letters to the editor, follow-up articles and the publication of "some additional thoughts" - the traditional progress of an academic debate.
In the Moses case, the discussion is already raging in the blogosphere just days after the article's publication (aided, I acknowledge, by an inflammatory TV appearance by the author in which he upgraded his 'hypothesis' to a 'probability'). Sure, a lot of the blog postings are Beavis-and-Butthead-style sniggery, but beyond them there's also a fair amount of reasoned, informed analysis (the Merkavah Vision and and BHA Science Group postings, for example).
It is in the reactions provoked by these controversial publications that we see the ongoing development of alternative scholarly communication channels - but they are also evidence of the "authority" problem with user-generated content. In having to sort the wheat (informed analysis) from the chaff (ranging from uninformed sniggery to non-scientific zealotry), I found myself frustrated by not knowing whose rhetoric to trust, and remembering m'colleague Leigh Dodds' paper at our PT Trends forum in December (Authoritative? What's that? And who says?).
Roll on wider adoption of the BPR3 initiative (which proposes that bloggers use icons to indicate when their posting is a serious discussion of a peer-reviewed work), or indeed of the embryonic kitemark for authoritative content that Leigh posited during his paper and which CrossRef are exploring further. As the boundaries between peer-reviewed publications and other fora for debate become less defined, I for one will appreciate a mechanism that defines whose analysis I can take seriously and who I should take with a pinch of salt.
Some of my favourite examples over the years include Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, Blind Ducks in Borneo, and Weeble Wobbles: Resilience Within the Psychoanalytic Situation (this one even had follow-up articles, What Is A Weeble Anyway, And What Is A Wobble, Too? and "Wobbly Weebles" and Resilience: Some Additional Thoughts). And of course we've suddenly uncovered a wealth of them since we came to host the Annals of Improbable Research ("A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" is certainly one I'll be taking home for further study).
The one that has caught my attention today, though, doesn't have the most immediately entertaining of titles (Biblical Entheogens: a speculative hypothesis). But perhaps I would have found it more noteworthy if I had at some point learnt the definition of
entheogen (en.THEE.oh.jun) : any substance, such as a plant or drug, taken to bring on a spiritual experiencePsychoactive substances? in the Bible? Well, yes, according to this recently-published hypothesis, which claims that Moses' vision of God and the burning bush was brought on by hallucinatory drugs. And what a stir it has caused. (It even made the British Daily Mail, but I'm afraid I'm too liberal to give them any link love).
It's particularly interesting to compare this to the Weeble examples I cited above. In that case, a controversial article was followed by letters to the editor, follow-up articles and the publication of "some additional thoughts" - the traditional progress of an academic debate.
In the Moses case, the discussion is already raging in the blogosphere just days after the article's publication (aided, I acknowledge, by an inflammatory TV appearance by the author in which he upgraded his 'hypothesis' to a 'probability'). Sure, a lot of the blog postings are Beavis-and-Butthead-style sniggery, but beyond them there's also a fair amount of reasoned, informed analysis (the Merkavah Vision and and BHA Science Group postings, for example).
It is in the reactions provoked by these controversial publications that we see the ongoing development of alternative scholarly communication channels - but they are also evidence of the "authority" problem with user-generated content. In having to sort the wheat (informed analysis) from the chaff (ranging from uninformed sniggery to non-scientific zealotry), I found myself frustrated by not knowing whose rhetoric to trust, and remembering m'colleague Leigh Dodds' paper at our PT Trends forum in December (Authoritative? What's that? And who says?).
Roll on wider adoption of the BPR3 initiative (which proposes that bloggers use icons to indicate when their posting is a serious discussion of a peer-reviewed work), or indeed of the embryonic kitemark for authoritative content that Leigh posited during his paper and which CrossRef are exploring further. As the boundaries between peer-reviewed publications and other fora for debate become less defined, I for one will appreciate a mechanism that defines whose analysis I can take seriously and who I should take with a pinch of salt.
Labels: "peer review", blogging, bpr3, publishing technology, scholarly journal, user-generated content
posted by Charlie Rapple at 4:12 pm
Bridging between the blogging and scientific communities
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Interesting posting from Jon Udell today ("Bloggers talk to bloggers, scientists talk to scientists") in which he draws attention to the disconnects between discourse happening in blogs and mainstream media, and that happening in scientific journals, even when the conversation is about the same article.
The comment and the subsequent discussion is worth reading. There's an interesting comment Geoff Bilder about CrossRef's forthcoming blog engine plugin; keep an eye on CrossTech for a formal announcement.
The BPR3 project is also making practical steps towards helping link up discussions in these two domains.
I've been arguing for a long time that publishers need to keep an eye what's happening in the blogging arena, as its a good test bed for exploring the transformation of discourse (scholarly or otherwise) that the Web enables.
The comment and the subsequent discussion is worth reading. There's an interesting comment Geoff Bilder about CrossRef's forthcoming blog engine plugin; keep an eye on CrossTech for a formal announcement.
The BPR3 project is also making practical steps towards helping link up discussions in these two domains.
I've been arguing for a long time that publishers need to keep an eye what's happening in the blogging arena, as its a good test bed for exploring the transformation of discourse (scholarly or otherwise) that the Web enables.
posted by Leigh Dodds at 2:18 pm
Blogging from UKSG
Monday, April 16, 2007
The 30th Annual UKSG conference started today. If you're interested in following along with the workshops and talks, then head on over to the Live Serials where you can catch up with the event. The group blog, assembled by Charlie Rapple, already contains some great summaries of the days talks.
Labels: blogging, conference, uksg
posted by Leigh Dodds at 4:44 pm
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