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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Who’s paying attention?

Note: This is a rewrite of an original post that I have deleted.

I frequently hear a dismissal of blogs, particularly as an activity in which leaders should engage, based on the volume of readers. It’s an old argument. I recall at one time, many years ago, the same argument was made for ignoring threads in message boards: “How many people actually read this stuff? Should we be making decisions or investing time on something that is read by only a handful of people?”

There were arguments to support the time and effort to monitor message boards and assess their impact. For example, how many lurkers were there, individuals who visited by did not post? And how many others were influenced by those who did read the message boards? But blogs represent an entirely new phenomenon, for it is not the number of people who read any given blog, but rather the “trust network” that exists among those who do.

This is a concept I heard articulated by Nicco Mele at a conference. Mele, who developed the Howard Dean blog, imagined a blog with only 10 readers. But if those 10 readers trust the information presented on the blog, one of them might link to a post when commenting on it, or employ a trackback. Let’s say that blogger has 10 readers, and one of them uses a trackback. Before long, the significance of the original message has been elevated, both in search engines and in influence.

I have a personal experience I can point to. The other day, I posted an item to this blog about the way RSS is offered by BusinessWire and PR Newswire. The item was just a cut-and-paste from a message sent to me by one person who had lifted it from another who had posted it to a listserv.

The ensuing comments pointed to the inaccuracy of the original post. As questions and confusion emerged from the conversation, the post entire thread got the attention of PR Newswire’s Media Relations Director Rachel Meranus, who posted a message that cleared everything up.

How did Rachel find out about the post? My modest blog generates somewhere between 200 and 400 page views per day (one of these days I’ll need to find out how many people are subscribing to the RSS feed and never viewing a page). That puts me far from the volume of readers the A-list bloggers enjoy. I’m reasonably certain Rachel doesn’t read this blog regularly. Somebody pointed it out to her, or it came to her attention through somebody who referenced it.

Rachel isn’t the only person to post to my blog based on something I wrote despite the fact that they were probably not reading my blog. Others include usability guru Jakob Nielsen and ZD reporter David Berlind.

And that’s the power of the trust network. The number of readers is fundamentally irrelevant. What you blog can have repercussions and gain visibility even if you have only a handful of readers. The naysayers will have to find some other reason to shrug off blogging.

07/02/05 | 4 Comments | Who’s paying attention?

Comments

  • 1.Shel, I think it is unfair to claim the original post was "inaccurate." The post articulated (to his peers) a British journalist's experience with using the organization's existing RSS feeds. It's not up to the end-user to make the process intuitive, it's up to the sponsoring organization to ensure it is so. And as you very well know, if it isn't intuitive and user-friendly from the get-go, it will get discussed, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately.

    In Rachel's own words they are now working on it:

    "As of today, we are currently offering full feeds of all of our members? news releases via RSS. Later this year we will be offering a number of categorized RSS feeds on our web sites. It is our practice to implement new technologies and distribution methods in phases. RSS is no different."

    I do see the power of this experience in a UK-based listserv post crossing the pond (above the 49th parallel then heading south) capturing your attention so that you post it on your US-based blog (and, for the record, you weren't the only one who found it very interesting) and, in turn, the posting catching the attention of a partner organization and PR Newswire's media relations director. It seems to me that the whole experience quite possibly bumped up the rollout process of the next phase...which would also be pretty powerful, so congratulations on your part in that.

    I hope Chris Edwards becomes one of the beta testers...which would complete the circle nicely. Particularly if he reports back on its success (or not) to the original listserv. Whether I "lift" any such report and share awaits to be seen....

    Cheers, Judy

    Judy Gombita | July 2005

  • 2.Thanks for the comments, Judy; and by the way, if I haven't mentioned it before, I really appreciate the emails I get from you. They're universally interesting! I didn't mean anything judgmental through the use of the word "inaccurate," and I agree completely that the onus is on the vendor to make access to its features intuitive: This much is clear from the need to clarify. The fact that the assumptions about the service required clarification is what kicked off the thread. So while the inaccuracy was by no means Chris's fault (after all, we can only comment on what we know), it still was an inaccuracy.

    Shel Holtz | July 2005 | Concord, CA

  • 3."Inaccurate" as to a working journalist's assessment of the service at the time of his posting or "inaccuate" as to what the service has and will become?! Big difference, there.

    I don't want to drag this debate on ad nauseum, but I'm of the belief that your choice of word was...let's say..."inaccurate," particularly when I go to the thesauras section of dictionary.com and ask for some alternatives. It indicates:

    Definition: erroneous

    Synonmys: all wet, careless, counterfactual, defective, discrepant, doesn't wash, fallacious, false, faulty, imprecise, in error, incorrect, inexact, mistaken, off, off base, out, specious, unfaithful, unreliable, unsound, untrue, way off, wide, wild, wrong.

    So, my question is would you (easily) substitute any of those synonmys for the word "inaccurate," as per your blog post? I really hope not. (I'd rather you just reconsider the whole sentence in a more positive light, as I don't see the value of denigrating someone's post to another communication forum--not your blog--particularly as it was not done with any malice....)

    Recently--and unrelated to this--I've been having some discussions with folks about the importance of choosing words carefully, where I've indicated how I'm of the firm belief that "language shapes consciousness and perceptions." Often *my* perception of a person will be formed (in part) by the words and phrases chosen in spoken or written communication. Lucky you to be the tail-end recipient of this thought process!

    Thank you for the kind words about my "universal" emails, and I'm glad you find them of interest. I'm not quite there yet--I have a continent or two to hit.... Enjoy your Fourth of July holiday.

    Judy Gombita | July 2005

  • 4.I love a good semantic debate, Judy, but in this case, it strikes me as pretty black and white:

    PRNewswire offers only one feed that covers everything:
    Not factually correct

    PRNewsire offers individualized feeds by content category to member journalists:
    Factually correct

    This does not diminish any of the arguments about the visibility or flexibility of the feeds, or PRNewswire's need to improve and enhance its offering, or of the justification for the original listserv item's statement. But from the standpoint of pure accuracy, one statement is correct, the other is not.

    Shel Holtz | July 2005 | Concord, CA

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