If you're even remotely into social media and have yet to read (or hear of) Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel (and the host of other authors who played a part in bringing the book to life), then you have some catching up to do.  Published in 2006 about the way blogging was changing businesses (and with tremendous foresight regarding how blogging would continue to change business), the book is still exceptionally relevant to business managers who not only want to grasp just what the &%*$ social media means, but want to see that meaning in context...especially a successful context.

Today is Blog Action Day!  This year, the focus of Blog Action Day is poverty - it's a day when thousands of bloggers all focus on one issue with the goal to raise awareness, inspire action, and shake up the blogosphere.

What's this all about?

For the last several months I've been involved in a project called RootsWire.  The project was initially started as a means to pull together content from the different blogs and web sites covering the Democratic Convention in Denver.  We are growing (at least conceptually) in scope to be an aggregation and cooperation site for bloggers and hyperlocal sites across the US.

Our intention is to build tools for sharing of content between sites in geographic areas, and to have local editors throughout the country who will build a human-edited daily digest of news generated by grassroots sites and organizations. 

Hey Everybody, Hope your team won this weekend (my G-Men brought it home in OT!)

Okay, so your trillion dollar budget dried up and now you don't have that sweet video lab with staff of seventeen anymore to get your video posted online. Life can be cruel sometimes, and Puffs with Lanolin is your best friend...but, wait, ne'er fear, Utterli is here. Utterli is a app that can be used to post audio and video to the web using your computer, mobile device, cell phone (and possibly more - I only dug as deep as using my laptop at this point.)

A few years ago I had the distinct pleasure of sitting thru a 7 hour session with Shel Holtz presenting on the topic of using new media tools for all sorts of repurposing communications efforts. Besides getting to see Ray Kurzweil speak for 2 hours, Holtz's presentation was the best I've seen on the topic. So I'm going to review his book, co-authored with Ted Demoplous, blogging for Busines: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care.

Now, right off the bat, some employees may contend that their blog is not used for business purposes, to which I ask...are you kidding? If you're talking about your company, you're talking about the business of your company, end of story.

The number of people blogging is still growing (just check Technorati for numbers), but the number of organizations starting blogs is rising, too. After enough staff members and volunteers touted the usefulness of blogs for conversation, news, and general transparency, it seems organizations are looking to give blogs a chance. Organizations of all sizes and sectors are utilizing this community building tool. Here are some examples of how far and wide blogs are being used to reach out to the community.

ARK Adventure

When the idea of starting a blog for our organization first came up a few years ago, I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. All I knew about blogs was that a few of my friends did it for fun, and the Houston Chronicle had about 50 of them that didn't interest me in the least. And since when was my organization the kind to waste its time on trendy stuff like that?

Looking back, I think my problem was not understanding the purpose of having a blog. I mean, we already had a website where we posted news and pictures - wasn't a blog just another place to put all the same stuff, only with a trendier name? At that time, I don't think any of us really "got it".

Josh Levy, who is awesome, and I talk about his new job as managing editor at Change.org, what he's learned at techPresident, and why he believes that just writing blogs won't change the world.

What is your role at Change.org?

Earlier in the month I taught a Nonprofit Blogging 101 workshop at the 2008 Making Media Connections Conference.  At the beginning of the session, I asked folks what their burning questions were.  Below are their questions, and my quick answers.  What questions and answers would you add?

 1. How do we decide if our organization should have a blog?

Answer these questions:

1. What is the goal you want to achieve?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. What are the communication tools you could use to achieve that goal?

If a blog is one of the tools you think would meet your goal, ask yourself: