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In 30 minutes or so, I'm getting on a plane and headed to San Jose, California for BlogHer! In case you've been hiding under a very heavy rock (or a dial-up connection) you've probably heard about this women's blogging conference.

I'm very excited to go, because it is the essence of why I blog. People. Connecting to people. Not growing stats or inbound links or my Technorati ranking, but the people behind those links.

With a couple years of blogging under my belt, I've been on dates with readers, made good friends out of mutual blog admiration, and gone to blogger meet-ups in other states. While plenty is being written about how lonely America is, the connections are just in different places. Instead of the cul-de-sac, it is through blogs, online social networks, even tagging sites.

So... with my laptop and carry-on bag, I'm off to meet the women of the blogosphere in person. I get to take my online connections offline, because in the end it is about the people.

(Full Disclosure: it is a work trip, Edelman has a sponsoring client. But that doesn't mean I'm any less excited to go, just that I have to also take business cards.)

Sometimes I keep my geekdom under wraps--cute purses, cute shoes, maybe even lipgloss. Then other times I get to do things like hang out with my DC co-workers who show me really cool FREE online tools. Then I geek out. "Oooh, that's how you sort your RSS Feeds? That is so cool!"

Those words should never actually be uttered, but uttered they were this week. By me. Many times.

What made me geek out? Three things in particular.

Rollyo.com. Sometimes when you do a web search, you get a lot of chaff. (Separating wheat from the chaff, an agricultural analogy, work with me.) You know the 20 sites that have the information you want, but you don't want to search each site individually. Well Rollyo lets you build a custom index and search within it. Yeah, totally cool. Then, cause this is Web 2.0, you can share your lists and use other's lists. Like Debra Messings' list about shopping.

The other site that I oohed and aahed over was Omgili.com. Omgili is a way to search message boards and forums. It has easy RSS feeds for your searches, previews the site before you clickthrough, and allows you to quickly switch to searching only one site.

Then after you've collected all those RSS feeds from your new search engines, you gotta do something with them. I am a big fan of Bloglines. Maybe because it is the first useful RSS feeder I was introduced to, but I might have to cheat on Bloglines and try a week or two with Jetbrain's Omeo aggregator. Word on the street is that it is resource heavy, so my computer might not support it, but it has an attractive layout and seems very easy to use.

I'm going to have to turn off the computer now, this level of geekiness is not good for my blood sugar.

Recently while surfing the digg front page, a very popular site where users decide what's news, I spotted the ultimate Internet meme. Pitcher Randy Johnson winds up and hurls a fastball straight for home plate. Except, in a once in a lifetime event, instead of reaching the batter's box the pitch hits a bird in mid-air, killing it instantly. What a hoot. ESPN anchor Fred Hickman sums up the event so eloquently by citing Prince's "When Doves Cry."

However, the funniest thing is the video actually isn't news at all. The event took place over five years ago. Johnson was playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks and has since joined the Yankees (with mixed results).

I raise the incident because it demonstrates that today the definition of "news" is changing thanks to sites like digg. The site does a wonderful job of recycling news that's long since gone to the graveyard. This includes many stories that corporations are happy to have seen die long ago.

Today, news does not necessarily encompass the new, but also the "olds." This includes events that some may remember but many more do not.

What's this mean for PR? Well, it could mean that there's an opportunity to recycle funny or entertaining stories from long ago by sending them to members of the digg community to seed. Or, on the flip side, it means that corporations need to be watching their brands to make sure the skeletons don't come tumbling out of digg's closet.

The definition of news is changing. Ask Randy Johnson, but don't ask the bird.

Upfronts are at record highs. Viewership is at record lows.

What am I missing?

RWM

Who says advertising doesn’t work (especially a roadblock)?

I happened to see this full page spread for Chris Anderson’s new book The Long Tail in the NYT yesterday.

Twenty minutes later I stopped in the Border’s store between the train station and our office in Chicago and picked up a copy. So kudo’s to whoever wrote the copy. You got me.

More importantly, Chris got me. I started and finished the book last night, reading through delays at O’Hare, a flight to NY and the ride into midtown from LGA. It made me really think. Check out the notes I scribbled on the inside front cover.

Seriously, these are on half the book’s pages. Why? Because this book isn’t about blogs, vlogs, wiki’s or social networks; The Long Tail isn’t about word of mouth marketing or any kind of communications at all – though communications plays a starring role throughout.

No, The Long Tail is about the seismic shift our economy is going through – from one exclusively focused on creating demand and achieving scale (mass merchandising, mass-reach communications, etc.) to one where individuals satisfy their demands for whatever it is, wherever they are, whenever they want, etc. And the best part is there are probably 100 easy-to-digest cases of how the long tail is creating real value for companies big and small.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what all this means to us. As I do, let me suggest that if you read one business book this summer (hell, if you read one book this summer) you’d do yourself really well to make it The Long Tail. It doesn’t answer all the questions. But it does help paint what we’re seeing all around us in an undeniably clear light.

Cheers,

RWM

Technorati Tags:
long tail, chris anderson, pr, public relations

I've been blogging since November 2003. It started innocently enough, I was working in London and didn't want to send mass emails to family and friends detailing my new life. So I googled "blog" and came up with Blog City as a host.

That's when the addiction started--writing my own blog, reading other blogs, commenting, learning how to use RSS, subscribing, linking, statistics. Now I write two personal blogs, contribute to two multiposter blogs and an online magazine.

And today, today I start Blog Finishing School. At least that is what joining the me2revolution is starting to feel like. The past few weeks, friends and fellow bloggers have noticed that I'm a bit more opinionated about the etiquette of blogging. And they have started asking me questions about attracting more traffic.

I'm going to tell you all what I tell them. And in six months, I'll come back here (don't worry Phil, I'll post in the meantime) with a more finished approach to increasing traffic and good blog etiquette.

1. Write. Write regularly, write good stuff. And if you are a photo or video or podcast, same goes for you. Produce regularly, produce good stuff.

2. Read & Comment. Go out into the blogosphere and read other blogs, comment on other blogs, be a part of the greater community. But don't comment with "Hey I'm awesome, can I have a link." Comment on the real conversation and people will come to you, because you offered something interesting, insightful (or inciteful)and they want more of the same.

3. Register. Claim your blog on Technorati. Use Blogarama or similar "clearinghouses" of blogs. It makes it easier for people to find you.

4. Feeds. Make sure that people can easily subscribe to your blog, come on now. RSS and ATOM. And then tell your readers that the feeds are available, introduce them to one of the many sites that collect the feeds. My Yahoo, Google, My MSN, Bloglines, My AOL, Newsgator, Technorati favorites...

5. Links. No, not linking to some big influential blogger, but linking to the people you read, the people you think are interesting, the conversations you want to join.

6. Live. If you don't live your life, you've got nothing to blog about. So make sure you take some time to be with friends, read books, eat fabulous meals, laugh, watch movies, walk on grass, and dream.

Those are my personal blogging strategies, but like I said, this is only my first week in the group. Ask me again in 6 months.

I've been skipping through the hours of audio I recorded during Edelman's recent General Manager meeting and annual four-day Summer School event.

Futurist Linda Stone spoke to both groups and I was fortunate enough to corner her for an interview. (It'll make its way into an upcoming episode of earSHOT.) Key to Stone's worldview is the concept of "continuous partial attention," or the idea that we we are often forced or accustomed to accepting simultaneous inputs from various sources. (As I write this, I have four IM services, a phone, a mobile phone, a browser, and my email operating.)

"Attention" -- gaining it, keeping it -- continues to be a word on the lips of many. When I took Dr. John Beck's class at Annenberg, he described attention as the scarcest resource. Beck codified these thoughts in The Attention Economy. Beck, it seemed, informed some of Stone's work.

I've lately been reminded of the great advertisement for Marshall guitar amplifiers from several years ago. The sole picture was a grenade. The copy read "Just because something is loud doesn't mean you'll want to listen to it."

People who have listened to my podcasted interviews know that I'm one of the more conservative voices when it comes to new-media adoption and evangelism. Too often, people are seduced by the newness of the tool such that it blinds them to its practical use. That's why I advocate reading Aristotle's Rhetoric -- taking a more radical (def. "to the root of") approach to persuasion.

My point: Gaining attention, though no trivial task by any means, is among the easier challenges facing marketers. Developing sustainable, compelling, and defensible communications is key...

...And it has little to do with tagging, blogs, Web 2.0, podcasts, RSS, AJAX, and so on.

Take an intellectually honest look at your communications objectives before you start throwing tactics up on a wall. Your efforts at gaining attention will be more meaningful and relevant. The PR industry -- and the groups it most wants to influence -- will thank you.

Technorati Tags:
pr, public relations, aristotle, rhetoric

TalkShop is a blog about word-of-mouth and the Me2 Revolution, published by Edelman and hosted by Phil Gomes, the company's Senior Counsel, Online Communications. This blog pulls in thoughts and opinions from members of the worldwide Edelman network.

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