Ok, I promise, no Birthday every month, but today does mark the 1 month "anniversary" of launching this Blog with my launch post.   So, how has it gone?  When I started I was committed, but still apprehensive about whether or not I would continue to have things I want to talk about on a regular basis…but so far, it seems I suffer more from too much I want to talk about.   As the month has turned, I have wondered how I should judge success of this blog?  I considered asking others how they evaluate success of their blogging activity (maybe some good ideas will get posted back here).  Ultimately, I decided it’s a silly question.  In the end, I blog largely for myself - a personal outlet allowing me (forcing me) to put what I’m thinking to "paper."  It’s an amazingly clarifying process - therapeutic even:)

In traditional "web metric" terms, I don’t know what to think.  Here are a few factoids…

• Pageviews:  5000+ (Including first 5-6 days on live spaces)
• Average feed reads per day:  150
• Best day in Page Views:  320
• Technorati rating:  118,074 (62 links from 34 blogs)
• 4 most read posts:
  • MVP Summit Days away
  • Convincing the unconverted…part 1
  • Convince the unconverted…part 4
  • Online discussions…insights you could use

In the end, to lift from Mastercard, what has been priceless is new connections I’ve made with like-minded people that I never knew 60 days ago.  As is typical in any community endeavor, you learn most from the people around you.  So, thanks to all of you reading, thanks to those who have posted comments here, thanks to those who have emailed me, thanks to those who have linked to me.  It’s been a pleasure!!

Sean

ADDED LATER:

Mukund from Best Engaging asked me a couple of questions about this post I’ll elevate:

1. Tell us what you learned. What worked, what did not?
2. How did you get 34 blogger’s to link to you and what are the best things that ensure you get blog linked?
3. If you started a new blog today, what would the top 3 things you do.

Thanks for the questions…let me see if I can add some answers.

Answers to 1):  Tell us what you learned.  What worked, what did not?
Learned: I’ve learned I have more to say than I thought.  I’ve learned that writing is a forcing function for thinking.  I’ve learned there is more to learn outside my normal circle than inside. I’ve learned there are lots of interesting people thinking about the same topic.  Per an upcoming post, I’ve also re-learned the value of built-in curiosity.  And I guess I’ve learned the perceived pressure of an unstated publishing schedule - a drive to keep up.
What worked - Follow discussions and see where they lead from site to site to site - keep unwrapping discussions across different blogger’s and when it strikes you, comment there (and include your URL). No surprise here, but see who people you follow, follow.  Schedule time to "research" - my subscribed feeds are now a serious source of weekly research - not a burden. 
What didn’t work - I’m not sure I know yet?? :)  Give me a little more time to determine what "worked" means to me.

Answers to 2):  How did you get 34 blogger’s to link to you and what are the best things that ensure you get blog linked?    I did spend some time thinking about this.  At this point, I don’t know how to assess this.  Is 34 good or bad after a month?  How important is it to me?  I hope the answer is by writing content that people are interested in.  That would be the dream that would make me feel the best about what I’ve done.  I don’t know if it’s true or not!!  I think the most important thing to do is somewhat obvious - go get in engaged.  Link to others saying interesting things - ask yourself if you are a blogger: have you updated your blogroll lately?  Comment on others blogs (that’s how I found you:)).  This to me is key.  Go thank people for linking to you - common courtesy (Technorati helps me locate).  Track your disparate conversations (cocomment helps with that).  Like anything, you get out what you put in.  I guess that is it so far.

Answer to 3): If you started a new blog today, what are the top 3 things you’d do?  Number 1 is that I would look A LOT more before I leap.  I was inspired and rushed to launch - led me to MSN Spaces…then I switched.  That switch was mildly painful.  I’d look a lot more at what other blogger’s are doing that I like and what I could model after.  I would talk to more blogger’s to get their lessons learned.  I didn’t do these things, I dove in.  I think that is what most people do - as there is some story that is important to them they are compelled to tell and thinking through the "platform" feels like it will delay them.  Next, own your URL.  I don’t like the idea of sitting off in someone else’s "place."  It’s one of the reasons I don’t blog on MSDN (which as a Microsoft employee I could and it would likely be a great way to get traffic).  For good or bad, what I write is a representation of "my brand."  I want to be responsible for that all up.  #3, play.  Play A LOT!  Try new stuff, get experience.  Some will be good…some not…but play, play, play!!!

Sean

Popularity: 5% [?]

Well, I read lots of others posts on Ning and I still couldn’t figure out if I should care.  So, I decided to try it myself.  I like the social notion of being able to create your own tailored community, but stuffing it off in another garden didn’t seem too interesting to me (as opposed to so many other choices).  I created a Ning destination for community group therapy…I’m not sure why, or if you should care, or if I even care…but I think trying things out is important and if you weren’t curious, you wouldn’t be here at all.  More on this notion of curiosity in a few days…

 I also joined (albeit relatively randomly) two Ning communities regarding Web 2.0 (http://web2pointo.ning.com/ and http://webware.ning.com/).  They didn’t seem all that active and I didn’t see yet what I’d get there that I don’t already get from the network I’m connected to, but I’ve come to accept that at 37, I’m often too old to “get it” on some of these social networking sites right off.  So, toes in..perhaps you’ll join me in the experiment.  Or point out to me what I’m missing:)

Sean

Technorati tags: ning, o’driscoll, web 2.0, online, community, social networking

Popularity: 2% [?]

Well, I hadn’t planned to blog about this really…as it is my actual day job…but, I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about this.  On March 12th, I get to play host for what I suspect is one of the biggest community parties on the planet! 

Some short background.  In my day job, I’m responsible for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award program.  The award began in the early 90s to recognize and thank the outstanding online community contributors on CompuServe.  Over the years, it expanded to include both online and offline community contributors to both Microsoft hosted and independent, 3rd party communities focused on Microsoft technologies.  Today, there are just over 3500 MVPs worldwide spanning nearly every Microsoft technology and in nearly 100 countries.  As an example, you can meet some of these experts on the Windows Vista Community page.  You can also search for MVPs here. 

It’s important to note that MVPs are NOT Microsoft employees.  In fact, I think they would loudly agree with me that they don’t do what they do in communities to help Microsoft, but to help other users.  As independent and highly active community experts on Microsoft technologies they provide amazing insights to Microsoft and more importantly, to millions of users through technical communities around the world.  I’m often asked how “I” can become an MVP and I think what’s important to say to this is that it really isn’t something to be manufactured.  MVPs don’t really try to be MVPs…it’s just who they are - they love to help people with technology.  The least Microsoft can do is reach out, acknowledge, and “Thank” them.  That is the job of my team at Microsoft. 

Now, back to the summit.  Approximately every 12-18 months, Microsoft invites the MVPs to Redmond for the annual MVP summit.  This year, just shy of 1900 MVPs will be joining us, making this by far the largest MVP Summit ever.  Now, I have to admit, I am excited to have Bill Gates keynote and kick things off for us on the 13th, but the real action is the rest of the week where Microsoft product teams will host 533 sessions designed to not only connect the MVPs with one another (a true highlight of the summit), but also with their peers in the product teams.  It’s an amazing site.  With MVPs registered to attend from 88 countries, this will also be the most globally diverse summit in our history. 

So, count on me taking some photos and getting them linked here via flickr.  And if your lucky, no one will catch any video of my annual required turn at karaoke.

Don’t forget to Digg it…

[digg=http://digg.com/software/MVPs_coming_to_Microsoft_for_Global_Summit]

Sean

Technorati tags: MVP summit, MVP, Web 2.0, Bill gates, Microsoft, O’Driscoll, community, online communities, compuserve, redmond

Popularity: 8% [?]

Ok, I’m off my normal topics, but this has been a big topic around here, so I thought a quick blog post was warranted.  But, I can’t do this without having a little fun.  First off, if you’re not sure if you should care, you should visit the DST Help and Support Center. 

Now, for the fun part.  It’s not often you get to blog your boss on NBC Nightly news.  It’s also not often I get to see my boss in a suit.  Here’s your chance.

Rich Kaplan is Vice President of Customer Service, Partners and Automation - you’ll see him briefly at the 2:30 second mark of this video. 

I’m giving you two choices.  See it here on Soapbox and here on YouTube. 

To loop back to social computing, I give you both options as here is a great place for you to comment on Soapbox and YouTube.  If you tried both for this, did you think one experience was better than the other?  If so, why?

Thanks,

sean

Technorati tags: DST, daylight savings time, Microsoft, help and support, Rich Kaplan, O’Driscoll, Youtube, Soapbox

Popularity: 1% [?]

To blog or not to blog?  That is the question.

Do you know a company still having this debate? (are YOU a company still having this debate?)

Beyond the borders of companies that have embraced communities, I hear this debate about blogging all the time.  There are usually a couple of common objections to employee blogging:

1)  Productivity - My employees have full time jobs, I can’t afford to have them out blogging.

2)  Quality - Are you crazy - content unscrubbed by marketing?

3)  Legal - Are you crazy - content unscrubbed by legal?

4)  Over transparency?

Just so we’ve covered it, let’s talk briefly about these objections.  The first two are largely emotional, but the 3rd can really stop you in your tracks.  The 4th is one you need to debate internally and be intentional about.

Productivity:  How to even begin with this legacy thinking?  What could possibly be more important than having your employees engage in conversations with the people that use your products and/or services.  Are you kidding me?  I’m keeping this one simple, but I can’t believe how much I’ve heard this.  If this sounds familiar, I’m sorry - maybe my post on insights can help.  I’m actually waiting to be challenged on this one in my own role - I will let you know if it happens.  I know people will wonder, how can Sean have time to do all this blogging AND his day job with driving community work at Microsoft?  Perhaps some of my own employees may even wonder?  My simple response is the same…what is more important than the insights I can gather externally to help guide our thinking around communities.  How do you ensure you step out of silo’d thinking that assumes we already know what we need to know?  This is part of my "thinking time" - something everyone, especially business leaders, should make sure they do more of.

Quality:  Fair enough, but unrealistic.  The world is already authoring content about you, your products, your policies, etc and search engines are blurring the source of who authored it.  You need to participate in this.  You have an opportunity here to change and personalize your "corporate voice."  This is nothing but positive.  Stop scrubbing content and using corporate marketing "speak."  It’s time for your customers to really know you, which means knowing your people.  Let go….. Further, there is an economic case here the "bean counters" (sorry finance:)) will like.  Depending on the business you’re in, authoring content is a tough part of the business.  There are always gaps, you can’t localize fast enough.  It doesn’t cover a broad enough set of topics.  It’s written for the wrong type of user.  By allowing blogging, more of your employees from much more diverse perspectives can participate in this creation.  You’re taking the first step to open sourcing your content and knowledge - (don’t get excited, your not done…you have to push this farthur to user to user voices embraced on your properties).

Legal:  This is the toughest one…and legal is not totally wrong.  Do not do this without legal, that would be a serious mistake.  But, remember, the job of legal (my opinion) is to tell you HOW to do things…not just to tell you NOT to do things!!  See the assumptive close for a refresher.  They have genuine concerns about how IP gets shared and how IP is gathered.  What outward facing guidance is "vetted" (you indemnify) and what is user to user advice.  These issues need to be worked through, but the point is they are resolvable.

Over transparency:  Is there such a thing as too much transparency?  Actually, yes there is.  Remember, you may know the difference between brain storming and commitments, but your readers may not.  Talking about futures when futures are uncertain may create implied expectations that you simply cannot meet.  This is unfair to you and unfair to your users.  This doesn’t mean you can’t talk about futures, but you need to be smart about this and not make implied commitments that you can’t deliver (your company can’t deliver).  In being more transparent, you will gain the trust of your users, but implied commits you can’t deliver leads to distrust - so discuss openly inside your organization what those guidelines need to be and then live with the policy.

Note:  For tips to overcome, go back to Convincing the Unconverted, Parts 1 -4.

I came across many helpful links on guides/tips for corporate blogging on the Diva Marketing Blog I wanted to share…Thanks Diva!!

Also, a "shout out" to Shel at a shel of my former self who also posted this week on the flaws and risks of corporate blogging.  Appropriate props to those he also cross referenced:  Kami Huyse and Randish who have lots of great insights on this topic.   Interesting the topic struck each of us around the same time.

Any of this sound familiar?  What objections do you hear?

Sean

Technorati tags: web 2.0, online, community, o’driscoll, blog policy, corporate transparency, assumptive close

Popularity: 9% [?]

Do you know about WOMMA?  WOMMA is the word of mouth marketing association.  And if you are a "Web 2.0-er" in your organization, you need to know about WOMMA.

First a little about WOMMA:

WOMMA is the official trade association for the word of mouth marketing industry. WOMMA’s mission is to promote and improve word of mouth marketing by:

• Protecting consumers and the industry with strong ethical guidelines
• Promoting word of mouth as an effective marketing tool
• Setting standards to encourage its use

Web 2.0 and Word or Mouth are inseparable concepts in my view.  Take the look at this recent cnet article:  Experts: Let customers help brand your product.  I blogged recently about how Search might effect your brand, but what about real user participation in your brand!!  This isn’t without some risk, but I’ve said before this is the direction, so time to get out in front.  (thanks to Andrew Brown for sending me this article!).

I’ve been part of WOMMA for the past several months and already made many great contacts through the network of professionals that participate both online and through their events.  This year I’m working hard to adjust my calendar so I can join the Word of Mouth Basic Training conference - and selfishly, I’m hoping I might see you there!  WOMBAT this year is April 17th-18th in New Orleans.  The keynote line up looks good:

• Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die as a headline keynote.
• Dr. David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
• Peter van Stolk, founder and CEO of Jones Soda

Sessions look like they are lining up good as well.  I know this will be a great event.  My friends at WOMMA shared a special discount code as a courtesy to my blog readers, so you can register with "friendsofsean" for a $75 discount on attendance.

Hope to see you in New Orleans!

Don’t forget to Digg it…

[digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/Are_you_attending_the_Word_Of_Mouth_Basic_Training_conference_in_April]

Sean

Popularity: 12% [?]

As a followup to my earlier post on Exploring Communties and Corporate HR, I thought this a worthwhile discovery to share (thank you Smartmobs.)  There’s an interesting article in Business Week on Co-working.  The concept is not particularly new, but I like the community nature for its motivation and the potential for new ventures that comes from people co-habitating in these sorts of environments. Check out the co-working wiki for information about efforts in your local area.

This article got me thinking about my own work habits.  Some people are very successful at working productively at home, I’m not.  Now, I didn’t say I don’t work at home - just ask my wife about my mistress - my Toshiba laptop!  But I’m not super productive at home, it’s more likely that I’m treading water in my inbox vs doing really proactive work.  Likewise, there are certain tasks I find hard to do in the often interupt driven nature of an office environment.  Examples here include research based reading, writing employee performance reviews, doing long range planning…oddly enough, it is often the work I would describe as "thinking."  In fact, have you ever been sitting at your desk just thinking, and had someone walk by your office, look in and see you, and suddenly there is this awkward moment where you feel like you should defend why you look like your are just sitting there??

Just sitting and thinking may be the most valuable thing you can do that you aren’t doing enough of today.  I frequently schedule time to simply dissappear into my "mobile office" which has become one of 3 preferred wireless enabled Starbucks in the area.

I don’t think I’ll personally get on the co-working train, but I like the idea and if I ran my own business I think this would be an amazing resource to take advantage of.  One of the things I don’t like about my "mobile office" is I have no interest in connecting with others while in the coffee shop - it’s too random a group and I’m there to think after all.  However, I like the notion of the co-working venue where others are there to work but you likely share common interests - in that environment I would want to form relationships and it would feel additive to me, not like a distraction.

One semi-related internal Microsoft story on this.  Many of our Subsidiary locations in Europe have an "open office" plan.  What this means is that no one has truly set space/offices, but it is all open/shared.  The first time I experienced this was at the Microsoft UK office in Reading.  Frankly, I was confused.  This is a big office - hundreds of employees - and everywhere you looked people where gathered in little clusters talking.  It felt very distracting at first - almost noisy.  I remember thinking…"what are these people doing??  Don’t they have work to do?"  By the end the first day, where all my meetings were held the same way, I was sold on the idea.  Like any organization, the hierarchy still existed, but it felt more transparent, more open.  The conversations everywhere stopped being noise and became buzz.  It was kind of exciting.  Something you just have to experience.

So, I thought all of this interesting food for thought on the how Gen Y workstyles, Web 2.0 lifestyles and HR functions relate to the way business gets done in the future.

Enjoyed this read…Digg it here!

[digg=http://digg.com/software/Communities_Smart_Mobs_and_a_follow_on_to_the_HR_discussion]

Sean

Popularity: 13% [?]

I almost couldn’t have a better example of what I’m talking about on the virtual and viral nature of community.  If you read my initial post on Convincing the unconverted, I talked about the power of the analogy by using my own personal story of BBQing…well, a few days later, the following email showed up in my inbox (names changed for privacy).

Good morning, Sean,

I’m Joe BBQ, the Marketing Coordinator for Cookshack, Inc. I came upon your blog post (http://communitygrouptherapy.com/2007/02/13/convincing-the-unconverted-on-communities/), in which you mention the Cookshack Barbecue Forum. Thank you for the kind words about the forum, it was great to read. I hope that you are still visiting the forum often.

March is the 6 year anniversary of the Barbecue Forum, I would love to quote from, and link to, your blog post about the Cookshack Barbecue Forum in our e-mail newsletter The Backyard Barbecue News. Would that be alright with you?

Thanks,

Joe

Marketing Coordinator

Cookshack, Inc.

www.cookshack.com

1-800-423-0698

I couldn’t have scripted this better if I tried.  I love my Cookshack BBQ and the fact that someone at Cookshack somehow got my post and took this action is a really cool acknowledgement of their commitment to realizing the value of communities to their user base.  Bravo Cookshack…you got me again!!  See you in "Q-ing" forums!

Sean

Popularity: 14% [?]