In the blog sack with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's Naked Conversations - By N.L. Belardes

Writer-poetRich Ferguson's spoken word CD, "Where I came From" rests next to a copy of Naked Conversations at my work desk...


Lately the business blog I write for ProSoft Technology has been getting more readership. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, but I think verbally poking at the industry I work in is the way to go. Sure, you have to write in a funny engaging way. You all know me here as a mudslinger gunslinger blogslinger, a jokester, a lover of the arts, controversial novelist, and a prodder who loves to poke a stick into the side of the mainstream media; and I’m not afraid to say a few “gee whiz” curse words while I’m at it.

But for the business community?

You have to be careful. A business blog is a whole new world of blogging. You have to be strategic. You must be entertaining. And I believe you must engage others in critical thinking. But do you have to separate both worlds just because you write differently in one blog than the other?

No, there’s overlap.

I just finished Naked Conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers (2006) by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. Naked Conversations is more than just a book about blogs and how cool they are. It’s a treatise on innovative thinking, innovative writing, and about engaging readers in conversations that are stripped down and to the point.


Out of control desk...



Naked Conversations is also a marketing piece in and of itself. Don’t let these guys fool you. They’re captains of their industry for Microsoft and Sun Systems—and if you think about all the industries and people these two gurus touch—they’re leaders in a universe still rapidly changing from yesterday’s big blog bang.

But is the blog universe out of control?

Not necessarily. Getting the good word out to individual bloggers is likely just as important as educating the business masses, and maybe even these guys spinning themselves into the main conversation regarding it all is not a bad strategy. They’re just trying to help the rest of us make sense of all the chaos, and to help us find the advantages of such revolutionary business and communication change.



Naked Conversations talks the good and bad of business blogging while sharing business blogs that fit a progressive new model in enterprise. You’ll find Design Sponge, Stormhoek, and more inside the book. One of my favorite blogs mentioned is a simple piece of marketing that is meant to be as informative as it is conversational. Stonyfield Farm offers organic yogurts for people into wellness for themselves and their children. They have two blogs: Baby Babble and the Bovine Bugle. I started reading their cow blog and suddenly found that I don’t have to talk soy smoothies, kid yogurt, or organic milk. I can ask questions about round vs. square hay, or how to get rid of barn rats, and I can get an answer. The conversation helps their blog traffic, and you never know… Maybe some parent out there will find their kid yogurt products through us just having a simple conversation.

Isn’t that how most products are discovered anyway? Selling becomes part of the word-of-mouth virus…

Naked Conversations is eye-opening not just for business bloggers, but for people in general who want to learn how to network with the world around them through blogging. It’s about human interaction, storytelling and conversations, and making a business or yourself part of an honest, transparent culture.

Blogging is a forum that changes the way media is perceived by both businesses and individuals. In a business sense, Naked Conversations points out that press releases are dead. That’s a one-way conversation aspect to dinosaur era marketing. Today’s business world needs two-way conversations that are online and face-to-face.



In humanizing communication, the modern press release becomes a relic, an unfashionable piece of paper or an annoying email that many blog-savvy media entities just don’t read.

So why do businesses still pour them out when media farms the blogs?

Because there are too many traditionalists out there as the world makes its transition to conversation-oriented business. Naked Conversations lets us know that though blogging makes business into a free-form structure of humanized capitalism, it’s still too new, still too dependent on culture and good writers, and damn good conversationalists, and on media hip to blogging. Their book is a noteworthy jumpstart to any blogger/media diet.

But there’s still work to do. Blogging must infect little towns and big urban centers...

And I should know. Noveltown only gets media attention beyond the Paperback Writer blog, Bakotopia, and so forth by sending press releases to TV stations and radio. Unless a company has the media as readers, businesses still have to maintain some traditional aspects.

You still have to interact through a traditional form of media contact… ala the dinosaur era press release.

But you might want to lead the media to your blog, to the conversation, to the written aspects of your company culture, or whatever it is you’re trying to promote.

Once you gain readers in the media and in people who want to join a conversation about the products you offer, as Naked Conversations points out, your business can become stronger, and you can find a sensible return on investment in blogging.

You can even be a rebel and wear a suit. Just ask Hugh. Or a pirate. Just ask Eric.

Buy Naked Conversations through Russo’s Online and support Bakersfield’s independent bookstore…

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Thursday, September 21, 2006. You can leave your response.