Blogging Simplified

I just read that quote in Mark Joyner’s newest book - The Irresistable OFFER. Of course he wasn’t the first to quote Sir Winston, but he was the first to write it where I happened to be reading.

I’ve been reading a lot of silly blog posts of late that are touting the death of corporate blogs, which, in my highly suspect opinion, have not even begun to begin, as of yet.

I’d like to see the muckety muck’s face that’s making the decision on whether-or-not to blog when he reads that quote.

How can a corporation that sells a service or product to the public even think about not having a blog ? How can they leave all that power on the back shelf ?

Somewhere, some blogger is talking about your product or service. Would it not be better and more manageable for it to be on YOUR blog, rather than one you don’t know about ?

Have a manufacturing defect you just found out about ? Who better to tell your evangelists/customers than you ?

Found a new use for your product ? Who better to tell the world than you and how could you do it any quicker and more thoroughly than on your blog ?

Got a unsatisfied customer out there ? Where can you better defend your product or ask other customers about the issue ?

No, the corporate blog ain’t dead yet. We may not call ‘em blogs much longer ( I hope ), but the instant interactivity that this content management system provides is here to stay.

Just in case you didn’t see it, I caught a thread at Promocharger, which ultimately led me to C/Net News.

The basic premise is this -

You cannot lure people to your site/blog with seemingly innocent wording ( read as headlines ) and then show them adult content.

One more reason you need to go to the Ask Bob Silber page and ask a freakin’ question.

One more reason you need all the legal education you can get about blogs - which happen to be the same thing as a website and the term Webmaster and blogger are now interchangeable.

One more reason to be careful and get some Disclaimers, some Terms of Service statements, some Child Online Protection Act info and lots of other questions answered.

Bob and I are trying to help, but we can’t help you unless you help us by asking questions.

If you like to read the C/Net article, click away.

So far we’ve gotten a few questions, but not nearly enough, so I’m gonna toss out some chum and see if any of you sharks will bite.

1) Can we use third party forum posts as content on our blogs ?

2) Can we use third party screenshots on our blog ?

3) Does our email update service ( FeedBlitz, FeedBurner, Aweber ) have to be CAN-SPAM Act Compliant ?

4) Can we sue Google for changing our Page Rank ?

5) Do we have any liability for any of the affiliate programs we promote ?

6) How can we be sure of ownership of the blog design we pay for ?

7) What do we need to do to make sure we own the content we pay to have written ?

I had a piece of software coded ( as a give-away for the purpose of getting links and subscribers ) on elance.com, what if some of the code it was copied from another piece of software ?

9) I write a health related blog…am I liable for any claims I make ? … claims made by products I endorse ?

10) Can my copy be too hypey for my own good on my blog ?

11) What can happen to me if I make defamatory or derogatory comments about a person ? … about a company ?

12) Do I need disclaimers on my blog ?

13) Do I need a Privacy Policy on my blog ?

14) Do I need a Terms of Service statement ?

15) I post semi-nude to nude photos on my blog, can I be charged under the Child Online Protection Act ?

16) I sell software on my blog and someone’s misusing a copy they bought from me. Is my software license that I had them check a legal, binding contract ?

As you might imagine, I’ve edited some of the questions for clarity and brevity.

This is not quite half of what I’ve received so far, so you can see we need more.

Please either leave your question here in the comments section, or go to the Ask Bob Silber page and ask your question there.

If you go to the Ask Bob Silber page, you’ll have the chance to sign-up for an email update of the products readiness and/or subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog.

Please do me the favor of :

- Leaving a question at one place or the other

- Linking to this post or linking to the original post

- Emailing an announcement to your list

We need all the questions we can get, so we can educate you as much as possible.

I’m betting you don’t really know what you’d do. Me neither. But I do know who I’d call.

Bob Silber - Bob is internationally known as one of the world’s most respected authorities on Internet marketing law. He is an Attorney, Consultant, Speaker, Author and former Adjunct Professor teaching Business, E-commerce, Intellectual property and Internet law at a major university. His clients include best selling authors, high-paid speakers, the Internet’s most successful marketers and up-and-coming business owners.

Bob is Legal Counsel to some of the most widely known Internet Marketing Superstars. His client list reads like a who’s who of Internet marketing and include individuals generating millions of dollars annually on the ‘Net.

How does a lowly little sales consultant, blog network owner like me know such a well respected guy like Bob ? Pure freakin’ luck !

I met Bob at an internet marketing seminar in Pensacola, Florida that was hosted by Willie Crawford in May of ‘02. Bob was one of the speakers. Then in December of ‘03, Bob hosted a seminar in the Florida Keys where I was intoduced to several people who I still partner up with to this day.

Recently, with our foray into blogging, I’ve started to see the tell-tale signs of the need for legal education for a new breed of internet marketer/blogger. And if you don’t believe you, as a blogger, are an internet marketer, you are wrong, which is well within your rights.

I’ve seen bloggers debate back-and-forth, thru comments and in dedicated posts, the legal ramifications of certain circumstances. Most of what I read was dead wrong, but I didn’t open my mouth, since I’m not a lawyer and could not be mistaken for someone who plays one on TV.

I’ve emailed and called Bob to ask him about the legalities of those situations, but didn’t print any of what I’d learned.

Well that’s all going to change … right now !

I’ve asked Bob to give us some help, as bloggers, in learning more of what we need to know … before we get too deep for his expertise to allow him to help us.

Bob graciously agreed to give me some time for a Q&A and in exchange, I’m gonna have my staff help Bob with his blogging needs, when that time comes.

So what I’m gonna do is put up a page in the next few days and allow you, as readers and fellow bloggers to ” Ask Bob Silber ” any questions about the blogging and remaining on the safe side of the tracks.

Then we’ll take those questions and Bob and I will decide how to deliver the info to you. It could be a printed transcript, an mp3 file, a teleseminar or some other form of media. But we will deliver the goods to you. We promise.

I want to say thanks, in advance, to Bob for agreeing to help and old friend help his new friends.

Bob’s a busy guy, as he’s in demand as a speaker, he does have a select list of clients that pay him well to watch over their legal needs and he got over a dozen of his own infoproducts to answer for.

He publishes the Bob Silber Letter, which has over 100,000 subscribers and he has his legal practice to keep up with, D. Robert Silber, P.A., where he continues to advise and protect authors, publishers, experts, speakers and Internet marketers and their creative works, intellectual property and businesses.

During his 29 year legal career, Bob has mastered the little known laws, which protect information product creators from running afoul of government laws and incurring civil & criminal penalties.

Some of his own works include :

· What You Must Know About Copyrights To Protect Your Intellectual Property

· How To Protect Your Creative Works With Trademarks

· How To Use The Legal Loopholes Of Disclaimers & Warranties For Your Creative Works

· How To Avoid Civil & Criminal Penalties For Illegal Pricing Of Your Creative Works

· How To Do Business On The Internet While Keeping The Government Off Your Back

· 4 Things You Must Have On Your Web Site To Avoid Legal Problems & Law Suits

Stay tuned over the next few days, as I continue to look for ways that Bob can help us, as bloggers, stay on the good side of the Federal Trade Commission.

The best way to make sure you don’t miss any part of this legal education is to subscribe to the Simplenomics RSS feed or the email alerts thru FeedBlitz.

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EDIT - If you can’t wait for the rest of the build-up, hoopla and prelim posts and want to go ahead and ask Bob Silber your question about blogging and staying legal, go on ahead of the crowd and visit the Ask Bob Silber page.

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Since I was challenged by Starbucker, a frequent commenter here at Simplenomics, to create this post, I’m going to do my best to come up with some meaningful post ideas and hope to not embarrass myself.

1) If I Had Known I Would Live This Long I Would Have …

Taken better care of my body from 18 to 30 ! I was awfully hard on this old skin and would have been a bit less abusive had I known how hard rolling out of bed each morning would be.

2) I Love My Job And Here’s How I Got To This Point …

The Providential Hand of God is all I can come up with, as I’m way too blessed to have done it myself.

3) The Best Advice I Ever Got Was …

Work hard and leave the results to God. He keeps score, you just keep scorin’ !

4) The Best Advice I Ever Gave Was …

Don’t get your honey where you get your money !

5) If I Could Change One Thing In My Past It Would Be …

The time I wasted in front of the television before I figured out it was keeping me from achieving my dreams.

6) The 10 Best Years Of My Life So Far Have Been …

The last 10 ! I’m 43 and am looking forward to the next 10 even more !

7) The Thing I Look Forward To The Most Is …

Waking up and seeing what’s in store for me each day. when you’re as blessed as I am, you never know just what good fortune awaits you each day.

The Best Skill I Ever Learned Was …

Reading ! Words are the keys to the vault. All you have to do is use the right ones in the right places.

9) The One Skill I Didn’t Learn And Now It Haunts Me Is …

Typing ! I thought the boys that took typing were sissies. Bad decision and I pay for it each day.

10) The Best Manager I Ever Met Was …

Still haven’t met him/her yet. I’ve met some good one’s, but there’s still a great one out there somewhere.

Now, I sped thru those, but YOU have to do a whole post on one topic and go in depth.

Or, maybe a bunch of you will just speed thru them like I did and we’ll see this go wide and deep.

Don’t forget to use a Trackback or a link to the original post …this one !

Sticking with the ” we’re more than you think we are ” line of posts here, I’ve decided to take Chris Garrett’s tremendous post over at Performancing and expand it to show that even these 10 post ideas could be used by businesses that blog.

Hope Chris don’t mind too much, but Bob Bly has me all torqued up and now I’m in show-those-sobs mode and might just go hog-ass wild for a day or two.

1) How To - This is almost too easy. What company couldn’t benefit from showing their customers how to best use their product. Would you like them to use more of it ? Think of these phrases :

Lather-Rinse-Repeat

Brush and floss daily

For best results, use daily

2) Lists - What company wouldn’t like to show that their product is ranked highly by an unbiased listing service ? What company couldn’t benefit from listing the 107 best uses for their product ? How many times have you seen an ad that shows which truck manufacturer had been given ‘ Best In Class ‘ ? How many different uses are there for baking soda ? Why do you think they show you all those uses ? So you try ‘em all and c-o-n-s-u-m-e more of their product.

3) Campaign - Use a blog post to rile up consumers aginst your competitior or to get them behind you as you go to battle for them. How many corporate blogs were used to tell the public about all that individual companies were doing for the victims of Katrina ?

4) Interview - Another easy one. want me to get riled up enough to part with my dollars ? Interview some of your current customers. Interview my favorite singer and let me and 1,037,942 other people submit the questions, then allow us to listen to the interview or download a transcript. Sold !

5) Review - Put up a site for reviews of your product. DO NOT moderate out the bad posts - fix the flaw. We don’t believe anything is perfect, not even my new putter. But it’s damn close !

6) Case Studies - Got room on your blog for a few case studies ? Good, that means more sales. Gimme the down and dirty facts…all of them, and I’ll buy more readily.

7) Research Results - Same thing as case studies. Give me all the facts and don’t gloss over any imperfections. Why not leave out the bad parts, you ask ? You need to read some of the writings of John E. Powers, probably the first professional copywriter. Wrote a sales letter a day and got $100 a day in 1880. That’s big money for 1880. Hell, a lot of people don’t make that today.

What’s New, Trends - Keep up with your industry and let me use your blog as the place to go for news and info. Aggregate everything, make it readable, filter it and then call me to the table to eat. Don’t make me look all over the place, become my go-to guy.

9) Attack ! - Attack your market and become it’s daddy ! Take over the joint. When you walk in, find the biggest guy in the place and slap the hell out of him. If he don’t get up, you’re the man. If he does, keep your hands up and look for the door !

Seriously, this doesn’t really fit for businesess, but 9 ideas wasn’t as good looking as 10.

10) Ask The Audience - Want to know what your market really wants your product to do ? Want to know what part of the market isn’t being served ? Want to know which product to bring to market next ?

ASK YOUR CUSTOMERS !

Don’t know how to do this ? Ask me. I’ve got a great script to use and all we need is a list or enough traffic to run past our page to find out what they will pay for and we’re golden.

Thanks for the inspiration, Chris and thanks to Bob Bly for getting me all torqued up enough to break out this post.

Somebody jump in here and add to the conversation, I’ve gotta go take a cool shower and calm down.

Back on May 13th I wrote a post that quoted Bob Bly and his views on marketing with blogs.

6 weeks after the post was written, Bob commented on it and said,

” Not sure how you guys reach the conclusion that I know nothing about blogging. Launched my marketing blog in 11/04, and as you can see from the archived comments, it is extremely popular. I am not a big subscriber to RSS, though I get Adrants and a few others that way. “

To which I commented back and let Bob know that we had not reached any conclusions, but that he concluded for us when he made remarks such as,

” In my observation, there are two major problems with blogging as a business-building tool.

The first is that most of the blogs I encounter are rambling, streams-of-consciousness musings about a particular topic of interest to the author, largely bereft of the kind of practical, pithy tips that e-zines, Web sites, and white papers offer. “

Now Bob has commented again and NOW he says he’s an uber-blogger and has a big-time publisher who wants him to write a book about blogs and their use for marketing.

Somebody with less on the ball than Bob is gonna pay him to write a book about the very thing he dismissed as :

… an utter waste of time

… rambling, incoherent, and more suited for private thoughts than public consumption

He also proved that he knew nothing of RSS and the delivery mechanism that blogs use when he said,

” The second problem with blogs is one of distribution.

With an e-zine, once the reader subscribes, he gets the e-zine delivered to him electronically every week or every month — or however often you send it.

But with a blog, the reader has to go out and proactively look for it. And since your contributions to your blog may be irregular and unscheduled, he has no way of knowing when something new of interest has been added. “

And Bob was kind enough to really trash blogs by saying,

” If you have something of value to share, there are many better formats for doing it online than by blogging, including white papers, e-zines, and Web sites. “

Bob also stated that he stood behind these comments ( kinda proud of them, I think ), when today he added,

” On the contrary: I stand by everything I said, and in fact, have a book on the subject coming out next year from a major publisher. It cuts through the hyper about blogs, promoted by blogging consultants and evangelists, and focuses on the real but limited value of blogs in the marketing mix. “

So now, Bob must mean that he’s seen that there’s money to be made writing about blogs and their uses, which he clearly states as none. He also says they have limited uses in marketing.

Really ? So does TV, so does radio, so does direct mail, so do newspapers, etc.

That’s why a smart company uses ALL of the available forms of media to get their message out to their market Bob.

And that’s why anybody with 1/4 of a brain wouldn’t pay YOU to write about blogs and their uses in the marketing mix.

A really smart company would pay ME to take care of their marketing and a publisher that was really in tune with the market would pay ME to write about blogs and their uses in the marketing mix. Since I own a blog network and am paid to be the voice of two companies as their pro blogger, I’d think that I know a helluva lot more than you do about blogging Bob.

But you don’t need me to prove that do you ? You’ve already done a great job of proving that yourself.

Now do yourself a favor Bob, read the blogs of the 5.8% of the Fortune 500’s bloggers and read the blogs out there that are trying to teach people how to best use blogs as a marketing vehicle and learn, but don’t speak, as you only lose more favor and embarass yourself more every time you open your mouth.

This would be a good time for the blogosphere to jump in, write more posts, maybe a few Trackbacks and links and let’s set the record straight - that we aren’t just ” hypey, … promoted by blogging consultants and evangelists, and of limited value. ”

I noticed a post kinda like this over at Darren’s house, so I thought I’d look into my stats for the month.

Those who have sent me the most visitors for the month of June, thru the 24th, are as follows :

1) James Brausch

2) Successful Blog

3) The Blog Herald

4) Copyblogger

5) Life Hack

6) Pearsonified

7) Bitacle

Angry Marketer

9) David Lorenzo

10) Bud Bilanich

I want to send a big Thank You ! to ALL who’ve sent me link love, visitors, comments and advice.

I’ll keep trying to get better and ask you to stick with me as I do.

It’s been a while since I dropped some link leaks on the blogosphere and I’ve added a few arrows to my quiver of late, so I might as well share ‘em with you.

Link Leak has a great post that I agree with whole heartedly. I’m not the greatest salesman of all time and I have a few flaws, but I get by with being only good at some facets of selling because I’m great at a few others. Click thru for a great read.

And while you’re there, they also have some great info about how to make your industry less boring.

Another Link Leak is about what to do if you need to market yourself or your product, but don’t really like marketing or selling. Does the word ‘facilitator’ work for you ?

And the newest arrow in my quiver ( or feed in my reader if that hurts your brain ) is this Link Leak. He’s got a new book out and I’m thinking of buying it if he doesn’t send me a review copy. Hint, hint…

This particular post is all about B2B sites and their failure to convert sales.

He also has a post about the new rules for reaching buyers directly with PR.

Click thru and check these out and let me know which one’s deserve a place on the best Blog Roll in the blogosphere…..mine !

Photo above courtesy of Graffiti.

It’s been a little while since I dropped the Link Leak Virus or even gave away a Link Leak, so I’d better get back into the swing.

On my previous post, I received a comment from someone and went to their blog and was pleasantly surprised to find posts about sales and customer service. Two of my favorite things to talk about, read about and blog about.

The only thing left for me to do is drop the Link Leak Virus on her and hope she infects a few other worthy bloggers.

Also, I’ve met a new blogging friend who likes Link Leak, so we might as well drop one of those on him and his blog about publishing.

Now that I’m back in the swing, maybe I can keep the momentum and really crank out some posts and dish out some link love. Probably not, as I have some out of town meetings later this week and we have a new server that’s causing us some grief. Wish me luck.

BTW - that Link Love image at the top of this post came from this Link Leak.

BTW2 - for more info on the link leak virus or link leak, follow the yellow brick road.