Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Bill Gates on Robert Scoble:

"You are letting people have a sense of the people here. You're building a connection. People feel more a part of this. Maybe they'll tell us how we can better improve our products."

"Scoble and Israel really understand the issues of corporate blogging well. They discuss why it's important for businesses of all sizes to engage in this new form of communication with their customers and of course, the danger of not participating."

—Michael Gartenberg, ...

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Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

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More About This Book

Overview

Bill Gates on Robert Scoble:

"You are letting people have a sense of the people here. You're building a connection. People feel more a part of this. Maybe they'll tell us how we can better improve our products."

"Scoble and Israel really understand the issues of corporate blogging well. They discuss why it's important for businesses of all sizes to engage in this new form of communication with their customers and of course, the danger of not participating."

—Michael Gartenberg, Vice President & Research Director, Jupiter Research

"Naked Conversations...covers the bases with real-world examples and insights for anyone who might have a stake in communicating, or conversing, in an era in which subjects can be exposed and laid bare at Internet scale, and participation and honesty rather than obfuscation and subterfuge hopefully prevail."

—Dan Farber, Editor in Chief, ZDNET

Whatever happened to honesty in business?

That's what your clients and customers are asking, even if your company's integrity is above reproach. Because, for decades, corporations have talked at their customers and called it communication. Now comes the blog—and an opportunity for your company to talk with customers and let then talk back. Using more than fifty interviews with people at all levels in all types of businesses, these experts demonstrate in a fresh and thought-provoking way how blog can repair corporate image and rebuild lost trust. And they show you how to do it right.

Can your organization afford not to blog? Read this book and then decide.

"Biz Blogging...WORKS. It is of...MONUMENTAL IMPORTANCE"

—From the Foreword by Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence

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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
People don’t want to hear from your PR people: They want to hear from living, breathing you. Blogs let you humanize your company and discover exactly what your customers are thinking right now. Microsoft’s Robert Scoble, arguably the world’s best-known corporate blogger, says it’s time you joined the conversation.

Scoble’s passionate about the power of corporate blogs. He thinks Microsoft’s 1,500-plus bloggers have fundamentally changed the market’s perception of his company, and he’s probably right. He has plenty of potential benefits to discuss: obvious, and less obvious, such as blogging’s benefits for staff recruitment. And he has plenty of case studies, from big companies like IBM and McDonald’s, midsize companies like Stonyfield Farms, and even neighborhood restaurants trying to fend off the mega-chains.

But he’s candid about the challenges, too: negative comments, confidentiality issues, resource commitments, trouble demonstrating ROI, and so forth. (And, whatever else you do, make sure to read his guidance on avoiding trouble with the corporate mucky-mucks. More than a few folks have gotten fired for ignoring these rules.)

You don’t need to be familiar with blogs or blogging to read this book: Scoble and coauthor Shel Israel patiently explain all the basics, tell you how to get started, and point you to the resources and tools you’ll need. Then, if you buy in, they offer dozens of dos, don’ts, and pointers. (Stay away from phony "character" blogs. Demonstrate passion and authority. Post fast and often. Tell a story. Include comments.)

Don’t let your marketing firm tell you how to blog. Learn how here. Bill Camarda, from the March 2006 Read Only

Publishers Weekly
For the past five years, Microsoft employee Scoble has maintained one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. Mixing personal notes with passionate, often-controversial commentary on technology and business, his blog is "naked"-i.e., not filtered through his employer's marketing or public relations department-a key part of its appeal. In this breezy book, Scoble and coauthor Israel argue that every business can benefit from smart "naked" blogging, whether the company's a smalltown plumbing operation or a multinational fashion house. "If you ignore the blogosphere... you won't know what people are saying about you," they write. "You can't learn from them, and they won't come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation." To bolster their argument, Scoble and Israel have assembled an enormous amount of information about blogging: from history and theory to comparisons among countries and industries. They also lay out the dos and don'ts of the medium and include extensive statistics, dozens of case studies and several interviews with famous bloggers. They consider the darker aspects of blogging as well-including the possibility of getting fired by an unsympathetic employer. For companies that have already embraced blogging, this book is an essential guide to best practice. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Scoble, a video blogger for Microsoft, and technology guru Israel have put together a bible for business bloggers. Drawn from their own experiences, as well as from numerous comments posted to their blog (http://redcouch.typepad.com/), they have produced a book with the conversational style of blogs. Starting with a brief history of "Word-of-Mouth" products such as the ICQ global instant messaging service and web browser Firefox, and placing blogging firmly in this context, they state that blogs are "Word-of-Mouth on Steroids." Included are interviews with company bloggers from the technology industry, of course, but also from various other businesses. Scoble and Israel outline the right and the wrong ways to blog in a business context (e.g., don't say anything you wouldn't say directly to a client or the company VP) and provide basic advice on blogging generally and on related emerging technologies. The key points of the book are that blogs are better than traditional one-way marketing because they allow instant two-way communication with customers, developing a loyalty unmatched by other marketing endeavors. In fact, if a business doesn't blog, its customers will abandon that company in favor of one that does. This book should be in all public libraries and academic business collections.-Robert Harbison, Western Kentucky Univ. Lib., Bowling Green Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780471790235
  • Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
  • Publication date: 4/12/2006
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 251
  • Sales rank: 1,105,374
  • File size: 380 KB

Meet the Author

Robert Scoble is Microsoft's best known blogger, with over 3.5 million visitors to his main blogsite annually. By day, as a "technical evangelist" (a marketing position) he helps run Microsoft's Channel 9 website and can be seen with his camcorder taping interviews and getting people inside looks at Microsoft's people and technology. He started blogging in 2000 and within a few weeks, he was invited to Steve Wozniak's Super Bowl party.

Shel Israel has been consulting for over 20 years. He has played a key strategic role in introducing some of technology’s most enduring products including: SoundBlaster, PowerPoint, Filemaker, MapInfo and Sun Microsystems workstations and more. He is editor-in-chief of Conferenza Premium Reports.

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Table of Contents

Foreword.

Introduction: Of Bloggers and Blacksmiths.

I. What’s Happening.

1. Souls of the Borg.

2. Everything Never Changes.

3. Word of Mouth on Steroids.

4. Direct Access.

5. Little Companies, Long Reach.

6. Consultants Who Get It.

7. Survival of the Publicists.

8. Blogs and National Cultures.

9. Thorns in the Roses.

II. Blogging Wrong & Right.

10. Doing It Wrong.

11. Doing It Right.

12. How to Not Get Dooced.

13. Blogging in a Crisis.

III. The Big Picture.

14. Emerging Technology.

15. The Conversational Era.

Acknowledgments.

Name Index.

Subject Index. 

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Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted March 22, 2007

    Excellent Book for Business Bloggers

    Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel seems like it was written with the Active Rain blogger in mind. This book is all about business blogging and how it is THE way to communicate with your intended audience. Why is blogging the best way for a business to communicate? Think about what 'advertising' means to you. What do you picture -- a TV commercial? A magazine ad? Maybe even a website or a virtual tour. What's the main problem with each of those? There is no TWO WAY CONVERSATION happening with any of them. Mainstream advertising is about talking 'at' people. Blogs let you converse with people. Blogging blows the lid off of 'shut up and listen to me' advertising. A blog welcomes you in. A blog makes room for you in the conversation. People want to talk. It is a basic human need, to be heard. You'll never hear a response if you talk to your TV. But leave a comment on a blog, and chances are you'll hear back from the blogger. Blogging is affordable. All it costs you is time. In a world where everyone seems to have their hand out, this is a refreshing change. Your blog is available to anyone in the world with computer access. Even the largest postcard mailing you'd ever dream of can't do that -- and certainly not for free! Having a blog may allow you to reduce your spending on advertising. The 'fresh pages' that are a direct result of blogging raises your SEO like nothing else. People will find you faster if only you take the time to blog. As a Realtor, blogging for business makes perfect sense. You are an independent contractor, your business is your own. Speaking in your own voice in your blog lets people know you in a way no other form of advertising could ever allow. Realtors sometimes bounce from one agency to another. It's should be important to you that people remember YOU, and blogging accomplishes this with gusto!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 1, 2006

    How ¿ and why ­¿ to be a business blogger

    Successful blogger Robert Scoble and co-author Shel Israel push people in business to get involved with blogging as a means of communication and of staying on top of conversations that affect their companies. The authors summarize blogging¿s history and provide examples of how companies have benefited from it, including interviews with high-ranking corporate bloggers. Their easy-to-read and easy-to-understand writing style ensures that even those who know little about blogging can grasp it. The book covers how to blog and how to participate in conversations, rather than always talking and never listening. We recommend it to businesspeople who blog or are thinking about it, and to executives who want to know why blogging is important and how it can build their companies¿ bottom line.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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