THE BARBER

Growing up, I was afraid of barbers. I guess I couldn’t really imagine getting any girls to like me if I was missing an ear. Even at a young age, though, I knew that the barber was important. I knew that great barbers weren’t the same as great haircutters or hairstylists. Great barbers engaged me, advised me, and helped me grow into a man. Each visit to the barber was a time of potential growth and change. In the world of blogging, barbers are few and far between. This is largely because a barber isn’t born; he is made. You don’t wake up one morning with the wisdom to become a barber; it’s something you learn over years of listening, advising, and leading. For a business, establishing a barber blog will often mean rising above company issues and even company policies. A barber will be honest about his company and his industry’s faults, as well as their potential. He won’t pick sides, but he’ll trumpet every success. For being impartial, he will gain both respect and derision. Companies don’t often intend to hire barber bloggers, but having a barber who is both accountable and honest, while still being open and authentic, writing one of your external blogs is like finding a Tiffany lamp at a garage sale a true find.

A variety of bloggers have walked the line between wise and available, proficient and humble. In fact, such bloggers are found in every industry. Most barber blogs are centered around one industry or a section of an industry. These bloggers don’t hide the fact that they are employed by certain companies, but they are so open and honest that this fact generally doesn’t seem to taint their perceptions.

The value of having a barber blogger for your business is massive but hard to quantify. How do you put a dollar figure on not only having an expert in the field blogging for your company, but also having him being regarded as one of the thought-leaders in the industry? How much is it worth to have him, and therefore your company, be found whenever someone is looking for information on what you provide? When you think of the world of PR and marketing, names such as Steve Rubel and Andy Lark quickly surface. Their respective businesses, CooperKatz and (until early 2005) Sun Microsystems, benefit from the blogging generated by these men. The reason? Any company smart enough and brave enough to let someone like Rubel or Lark be open and successful, without feeling jealous, must be a great company to work with.

Overall, a barber blogger brings three key benefits to a company:

• Visibility Especially for small or boutique companies, such as CooperKatz, having an industry-defining blogger on your staff can transform your company.

• New ideas The great thing about bloggers who are leading their industries is that typically they interact with lots of people. As such, they are able to create new relationships, identify new opportunities, and generate new ideas effectively.

• A human perspective It’s difficult to put a value on having a blogger who makes your company seem human, approachable, and caring. While you may not want to seem weak, it’s hard to argue the value of seeming real. Prominent barber bloggers can also bring in side benefits, such as getting you and your company invited to participate at industry conferences and contribute to trade publications, and otherwise raising your profile for success within your industry. One thing that can be said about barbers is that people trust them. Regular people, like your customers, suppliers, and employees, trust barbers because they tell the truth, have wisdom, and aren’t afraid to share it.

HAVING A BARBER ON YOUR SIDE

Back in mid-2004, nobody knew who Thomas Mahon was. The youngest tailor of custom-made suits on London’s famous Savile Row, Mahon allied himself with Hugh Macleod, a popular and respected barber blogger. Through this relationship, Mahon secured lots of interviews and incredible blog exposure; today, as a result, he is growing his business faster than he could have ever imagined. (For more on Mahon and his blog, see “An Authentic Marketing Voice” later in the article.) While having a barber as one of your bloggers can provide a strong voice for your company, he shouldn’t be the only voice for your company. You also need people who can convey information effectively, people who can build relationships, people who can point out valuable information, and a whole suite of other people, personalities, and places to provide input and support. An effective city isn’t built up of only barbers, and neither should be your company’s external blogging presence.

THE BLACKSMITH

The barber may cut a wise figure, but the blacksmith can be an imposing one. He works craftily with his hands, and it shows. Nobody doubts a blacksmith’s ability, as his handiwork is displayed all over town. Similarly, blogging blacksmiths are visible in a way that differs from barbers. A blacksmith is visible because his craft, and therefore his talent and knowledge, are always visible. A blacksmith blogger will dive into a deeper level of knowledge of his craft and expertise than any other blogger; as a result, most of his readers are also blacksmiths.

Software developers usually fall into this camp. A blacksmith blogger is essential to any company looking to gain trust in the industry, because blacksmiths talk to other blacksmiths, creating an exchange of knowledge directly between the people who have it, which makes everyone’s life easier. A blacksmith can also help to solve customer issues effectively, because he knows the issue better than anyone else in your organization. In many ways, the typical blacksmith blogger is a “ground floor” worker. He isn’t typically in management and likely doesn’t get much credit from within the company. But he knows his stuff, and others who know their stuff respect him for it.

While barber bloggers are usually popular, the sheer number of blacksmith blogs in a company will often mean they are far more effective at communicating than most people realize. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is only a high-tech phenomenon. Individuals in law, finance, healthcare, and other industries ruled by small to medium-sized businesses are gaining increasing exposure for themselves and their companies solely through their knowledge and their willingness to help. A blacksmith blogger can help a company in a number of ways, including these:

• By helping customers Blacksmith bloggers, because their work is so visible, are often asked by distraught customers how to solve simple issues. For lawyer blogs, this might be in the form of basic law advice; for home improvement bloggers, it might be information about where to find a certain kind of building material, for example. Blacksmiths are sharing people, and the goodwill they generate with your customers is valuable.

• By spreading news Because of their knowledge of their craft, when blacksmith bloggers breaks news, people listen. Successful blacksmiths won’t just break news, though, they’ll also tell people what it really means. When Microsoft was beta testing its new search engine, for example, the MSN search team blacksmiths used the blog to announce the launch, to admit what areas needed work, and to inform the public about where the product was heading. This helped develop trust and expectations of the product to come.

• By establishing relationships While barbers establish topheavy relationships with visible people in the industry, blacksmiths establish relationships with other blacksmiths, generally fostered around mutual respect and admiration. Some of these “underground” relationships are often the most valuable ones for a company, as they are privy to wisdom and knowledge to which your company otherwise wouldn’t have access. Some businesses will not be comfortable with allowing blacksmith bloggers in, largely because of a fear of openness or of sharing information. These companies think that every bit of information that leaks out is value they are losing, because knowledge is power. However, they often don’t see that every piece of information they provide via a blacksmith blogger is also returned several times over in valued customer support. As your secretiveness decreases, the community’s trust in your company increases. This is a foundational part of employing and encouraging blacksmith bloggers. While you obviously don’t want them to give away anything truly secret (like upcoming product designs or financial issues), blacksmiths can do common sense things to increase your customers’ trust in you, to build relationships, and to help customers.

A PERFECT JEWEL

Rebecca Thomas owns a jewelry store and decided to start a blacksmith blog (www.rebeccathomasdesigns.com/blog) to increase the size of her business and to share stories, patterns, techniques, and other things of interest to her customers. This is her blogging story. “As I started thinking about the presence I wanted my jewelry business to have on the Internet, I knew I wanted to include a blog.

I was already writing other topic blogs. I figured another one wouldn’t be too difficult. “Where my other blogs had been born on impulse and nurtured haphazardly, I wanted this new one to be more thoughtful. After all, it was going to be my best way to develop a relationship with potential customers. I could have taken the ‘build it and they will come’ approach, but based on my blogging experiences I knew that I wanted something that would engage visitors, that would encourage them to take a chance on me and my work. “More importantly, I wanted the jewelry pieces themselves to engage visitors. Every single one of my designs has its own story, and those stories can reach people far better than just the pictures. At our core, we are a society of storytellers. We weave them around us every day in our lives, and we respond to them because they often reflect something in our own lives. “I blog to share the stories of my designs. I blog to share patterns, techniques and stone lore.

I blog to share the stories of my business as it struggles to become established. I blog to bring a human touch to my business.” A blacksmith is key to building that trust, building relationships, and creating positive customer experiences. They aren’t a replacement for a customer support system, but they can definitely help customers with issues that may be more or less common. Employing or being a blacksmith takes a lot of work, but once you see your craftsmanship displayed across town and people’s lives made better thanks to your efforts, it’s worth the hard work.

THE BRIDGE

While a bridge may not necessarily be the most important location in all towns, for those who need to cross it, it is absolutely essential. In riverside cities, the presence of bridges unites one side of town with the other. So it is with bridge bloggers.

They read blogrolls so they can find new blogs to read, and then they read hundreds, or even thousands, of blogs. They devour these blogs so that they can build relationships, expand their world, and make connections. For your business, bridge blogging can have unexpected results. Some bridge bloggers have facilitated conversations with people who wouldn’t otherwise have spoken to each other, while others have introduced people who have gone on to found incredibly successful companies. A bridge blogger has two primary areas in which she finds value: relationships and making connections that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Bridges create relationships with people around the world, across industries, and across disciplines. Sometimes, these relationships didn’t exist before.

Having a bridge blogger in your business can have some interesting effects:

• Create new business opportunities Because bridge bloggers are relationship oriented and passionate about who they know, they are incredibly good at finding unusual opportunities that either your business or your customers may not have considered. The number of new opportunities a bridge blogger is able to create is proportionate to the number of relationships she is able to build in distinct industries. The more relationships she has, the more your business will benefit.

• Create new customers Because a bridge blogger knows so many people and is so passionate, she is a natural salesperson. But because she rarely comes across as trying to sell, largely due to her passion and honesty, most people don’t realize they are being sold. In addition to building external relationships, a bridge blogger also builds relationships within your company. Much like the blacksmith, the bridge cares about people and in many ways will function as an advocate for customers, ensuring that the right.

FROM A YAHOO TO A YAHOOLIGAN

Jeremy Zawodny is a search evangelist at Yahoo!, and his popular blog (http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog) is a perfect example of a bridge blog. Not only do his discussions pull in people from all walks of life, but he also seeks out relationships with people inside and outside his industry. In fact, Zawodny is such a natural “un-salesperson” that he has helped get people hired at Yahoo! because he believes in the company so much. things are done for the right people. Bridge bloggers create positive experiences for customers, something all businesses need.

Allowing a bridge blogger to do her thing should be a natural extension of any corporate endeavor. Relationships are basically give-and-take, and any relationship that costs more than it provides generally isn’t worth having. Relationships take work. Bridge bloggers are happy to do some of that work, as long as their work is rewarded and good things happen for both parties as a result. A bridge blogger doesn’t want to enable a one-sided relationship anymore than you want to be part of one, which is why you need to make sure that you are valuing both your bridge blogger and the good relationships she’s building.

THE WINDOW

A window allows people inside to see out and people outside to see in. A window blogger is someone who gives a distinct perspective on the workings of your company to the outside world and, thanks to her honesty, relays what’s happening in the outside world back to the inside.

Jonathan Schwartz (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan ) is perhaps the most well-known window blogger, as he often gives insight into his company’s (Sun Microsystems) ways and means. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he’s the company president. However, you don’t need to be well-positioned to be a window blogger; you need only insight into the life of the company, which is something most employees should be able to pull off. Window bloggers are often seen as an odd, though respected, bunch. They, like barbers, don’t pull any punches. They tell it like it is, good or bad. But they also go beyond that by citing reasons for decisions made and why mistakes happened, or by announcing the launch of new products. Window bloggers thrive on context and communication. A window blogger in your company can best be used by encouraging her to do the following:

• Share background Whether a mistake has been made or a great piece of news has been announced, a window blogger is much like a back-channel into an organization. She can provide the inside scoop on what’s going on and why, without it sounding like a marketing pitch. Her honest opinions, which build trust over time, and her frank assessments of company developments and the industry are valuable for people wanting to know what something means.

• Deal with complaints While she shouldn’t serve as the only customer service department, because a window blogger knows the company, she is able to share why something in particular happened. Did the phone system disconnect a caller? Maybe a power outage occurred, which is something people can relate to. The intent of a window blogger is never to spin, because most people relate to the truth.

ALL GOD’S CREATURES SHOULD BLOG

Brian Bailey is the web director at Fellowship Church in Dallas, Texas. He has been blogging for more than a year at his personal blog (www.leaveitbehind.com/home); however, his church recently began embracing blogging as a business decision. Bailey’s blog has long been a view into a sophisticated web technologies group, as he grappled with choices of programming languages and platforms, chose to use Microsoft’s .NET Framework, and then moved to an open-source alternative. Thanks largely to Robert Scoble (http://scoble.weblogs.com ), Bailey’s blog has become one of the more popular Christian blogs out there.

The Fellowship Church’s blog (http://blog.fellowshipchurch .com) is a window blog, as it covers recent happenings in the church and offers a unique view into the organization’s inner workings. The blog also regularly interviews staff and church members, providing a unique place for people to share experiences. In this way, the blog goes beyond being just a window. Successful window blogs don’t always need to be written by individuals. Many companies are starting window blogs, where they interview executives and staff, post video interviews, and otherwise try and give people on the outside a look inside the company. While the use of a window to see in is an obvious benefit, successful window blogs also allow companies to see out. As people learn about your company, they learn to trust you and will often open up and give you permission to enter their lives in ways that they wouldn’t have considered before. Being bold and establishing a window blog or encouraging window bloggers in your company can help build a two-way trust in unique and encouraging ways.

THE SIGNPOST

As you might imagine, a signpost points the way to useful and important places. Today’s real-world signposts point us to major sporting locations, restaurants, and other items of a tourist nature; others provide signs to ensure civil order, such as speed limits and parking boundaries. A signpost is designed to do two things: inform and point the way. Similarly, a signpost blogger does two things: informs readers about useful information and points the way to other useful information. While signpost bloggers may not give you the direct benefits of other, more personally visible types of bloggers, they do provide two important benefits:

• Provide a source of information A signpost blogger is someone people learn to trust and visit on a daily basis, either through feeds or by accessing the blog itself. As such, the blogger is seen as a knowledge- and thought-leader, someone people seek out for a distinct point of view.

• Filter information Because people learn to trust the signpost blogger, they learn to see into his personality and values. In fact, many signpost bloggers are incredibly influential because they’ve demonstrated their ability not just to find good information, but also to filter out the garbage. A signpost blogger is a valuable asset. Many companies have set up signpost-style blogs as their official company blogs (mixing in some company news, of course), because they work so well as Roland Tanglao is a major signpost blogger from Vancouver, Canada. He writes a variety of blogs, but his personal blog (www.rolandtanglao.com/ ) is an eclectic mix of tech news, advocacy, life, and pointers to other interesting things.

Tanglao’s posts typically comprise one or two sentences about why he believes something is worth his attention, a quote, and a link to the site where the quote came from. Tanglao rarely delves into his deep convictions or thoughts on a topic (at least not on his blog), and he is well respected for his ability not only to be fair, but to find things that are worth looking at whether you’re in business, a techie, or just curious. It’s taken years for Tanglao to develop a sense of trust and respect, as both a blogger and a person, and it’s something he isn’t willing to give up. Many expect Tanglao to keep up his blogging style for many years to come. information outlets. You can tell folks what’s going on, include a tidbit of opinion, and get feedback not only on your opinion, but also on issues that people care about.

Signpost bloggers do need to ensure that they have meat in their overall blogging strategy, rather than just pointing out interesting things. Signpost blogs can help your company gain trust and a decent amount of visibility, but they won’t likely help your product development, overall image, or customer knowledge at least not directly. That doesn’t mean you should shy away from having, or being, a signpost blogger, however. The choice of what you include on your blog is up to you as an individual, your time, and your business priorities. A signpost blogger requires a variety of sources, a solid eye for what’s valuable, and the ability to devote a bit of time to write short posts on subjects that are worth blogging about.

THE PUB

Pubs and bars have always been an essential part of any town. While some are raucous places ruled by bad beer and loose conduct, the best pubs have always been a place of social unity, where ideas (and laughs) are exchanged in a more open and honest way than in any town hall. Pubs are gathering places where communities go to share ideas and have some laughs. The alcohol is a secondary concern in the greatest pubs music may draw people in, or interesting people may be the ticket. For others, such as authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, pubs provided the atmosphere and the mutual respect among creative types who frequented the venue. Like great pubs, a pub blog can be an incredible addition to any community. The pub blogger welcomes people, creates community, enjoys discussion, and loves laughing at and with friends old and new. Everyone feels at home on a pub blogger’s blog, and everyone wants to have a say, largely because everyone actually gets heard. While a pub blogger, much like any bartender I suspect, has an opinion, she values the exchange of ideas and personalities too much to quell any discussion by forcing her opinion onto others. A pub blogger can be boon to a business by providing the following:

• A sense of equality When any individual’s voice is heard, everyone’s voice is stronger; this is an important principle in blogging. Equally important is that anytime you don’t provide a place for your customers to be heard, they’ll go elsewhere to sound off, even though they would probably rather be communicating directly with you. Having a place where all voices are equal means that all voices get heard.

• A sense of community It’s easy to know when you have a true community behind you, but it’s incredibly difficult to get one going. Communities are invaluable, though, as they help information spread, they help create customer evangelists, and they create positive experiences for your company, without you doing very much at all.

• A sense of fairness One of the fundamental challenges facing companies today is ensuring not only that everyone has a place to have his say and has people to relate to, but also making sure that something gets accomplished in response to people’s comments. Most people value fairness. Customers expect companies to do the right thing, and customers want to be heard, especially when things aren’t right. A successful pub blogger allows people to be heard but can also assure people that the right thing is being done assuming, of course, that the right thing is being done. In a true pub blog, everyone is equal and everyone has a voice. Some larger pub sites, such as MetaFilter (www.metafilter.com) and Slashdot (www.slashdot.org), get around the potential cacophony by allowing anyone to submit a posting and then having a select group of editors approve the best ones for publication.

This allows anyone to submit information and ensures that a large pool of participants create an equalizing force that motivates the community not only to read the best stuff but also to seek out their own stories as well. Creating a pub blog takes the strong community aspect of blogs and amplifies it. For this reason, many companies looking to start pub-style blogs are establishing forum or bulletin board systems, and then having blogs run on top of those, balancing authors with the community. Microsoft’s Channel 9 (http://channel9.msdn .com) is a pub blog, and a variety of other companies, such as Citrix and Novell, enjoy such blogs.

THE NEWSPAPER

A newspaper is meant to be an impartial source of information. While modern newspapers do have editorial and opinion sections, they generally provide information presented as objectively as possible. Newspapers are, by nature, heavily transmission based. Little interactivity is going on unless you count the crossword puzzle or the letters to the editor section. The point of a newspaper is to tell people what is going on in the world and their community.

This is also the purpose a newspaper blogger fulfills. She isn’t necessarily looking for feedback, nor is she trying to build relationships, trust, and other personal commitments. Newspaper bloggers are transmitting news, and as long as they do it effectively, it’s not exactly a bad idea. Yes, engaging your audience and building trust, community, and all that stuff is good. However, sometimes you simply have something to say, and a blog is a great way to say it. Thanks to the power of feeds, you can know when and what people are reading. Feeds brings a special dynamic to news type information, because not only can you determine who is reading, you also know that the people who actually want the information you are providing are getting it. One of the reasons many informationbased sites are starting blogs that provide value in bite-sized chunks is that regular information allows readers to interact with the company, without any commitment on the reader’s part. With feeds, readers are in control. Companies can still get readers’ attention, and they still create positive experiences for the readers never a bad thing, especially if you provide information on a daily basis. A newspaper style blog is also a great opportunity to serve as a central hub for information in your industry and community. You don’t necessarily get the community together on your site like a bridge or pub, but by keeping the community informed, you stay visible, relevant, and in the center of it all. The challenge with a newspaper blogging, as with a real newspaper, is content creation. Producing a newspaper style blog requires a lot of time and effort. A true information source requires planning, resources, and time. Therefore, ensure that your company will actually benefit before beginning such a blog.

Yes, it’s a great way to get information out to readers and in a much more reliable manner than e-mail but it’s also a lot of work. Some companies, unfortunately, jump into blogging quickly; post interesting, lengthy entries with all kinds of insight; and then eventually stop blogging because it’s too much effort. Before you start a newspaper blog, ask yourself if it’s what you really want. Another way to launch a successful newspaper blog is by building traffic with another type of blog and then letting readers or the connected community provide the content. This not only empowers the community, but it means that the blog writers don’t bear the full responsibility for creating all the content. No matter what kind of blog you eventually start, the first question you should ask yourself should not be “What kind of blog should I start?” Instead, it should be “What am I trying to accomplish?” Determine your goals first and work toward them using blogs. If you decide to share information with customers in a transmission format, a newspaper blog may be the way to go. That said, if you can produce a successful newspaper blog, you can reap some great rewards.

WHAT KIND OF BLOGGER ARE YOU?

Each of these profiles has positives and negatives and can be somewhat abstract largely because you’ll likely use bits of all of these types in your blogs. Sometimes you’ll want to inform, sometimes you’ll want to discuss, and sometimes you’ll want to point out interesting things that are going on. A healthy blog is a balanced blog. Let’s take a look at some popular types of blogs and how they match up to these profiles. You can learn some interesting things by looking at examples of blogs to see where they’re strong and not so strong. In the following sections, we’ll look at the following types of blogs:

• CEO blog

• Marketing blog

• Aggregation blog

• Staff blog

• Specialized blog (marketing, business development, and so on)

THE CEO SAYS…

The CEO blog is a common type and refers to a blog created by anyone in a senior position of leadership within a company. When the first CEO blogs appeared, they were regarded with a lot of cynicism. After all, bloggers and readers reasoned, since when did a CEO talk authentically or honestly? But thanks to solid examples by CEOs and senior executives such as Bob Lutz (http://fastlane .gmblogs.com/), Jonathan Schwartz (http://blogs.sun.com/ jonathan), and Mark Cuban (www.blogmaverick.com), company leaders now have solid examples of not just how to blog successfully, but also why to blog. Each of these leaders has embraced the chance to shape public opinion, talk directly with customers, and tackle industry and company issues head-on, instead of going through marketing folks and journalists. CEO, executive, and business owner blogs are powerful because they present the mostly unfiltered views of a single blogger who is an important part of a company. They are real people, and they are human at least the successful ones are.

Most successful CEO blogs are a combination of blacksmith (written by someone who knows the company well), bridge (they make connections with people), and window (they allow people to see into the company, while letting the company see out). By drawing on the strengths of all three types, successful CEOs, executives, and business owners can build rapport and trust, convey important company news, provide feedback on the industry, and inform people about what’s going on within the company. It’s important that CEO bloggers resist the urge to stand on a soap box and preach to the masses. Successful CEO bloggers have learned, through example, that the best blogs are written more from an “on the couch” perspective than an “on the soap box” one. Customers would much rather interact with leaders as people than as company mouthpieces.