Bloggers About Dialogue

Ask a blogger why he or she started blogging and it’s likely you’ll hear that it had to do with sharing a wealth of knowledge and finding an audience to teach. I enjoyed a conversation last night with a blogger who had been blogging for 5 years and she told me that she started for every same reasons. It’s information sharing that gets us here. But it’s the conversation with real people that keeps us engaged and building communities — for our businesses and as part of our lives.

Though we participate in the conversations on our blogs and others, two of our own Successful and Outstanding Bloggers were extending the conversation to the folks who don’t necessarily do that.

Have you met Leah Jones and Jeremiah Owyang?

Look there’s Leah Jones, above the fold on the front page of the Business Section of the Chicago Tribune!

Leah Jones, Conversation Analyst for Edelman in Chicago and Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst for Social Computing at Forrester Research were featured in a piece called, “You talk, they hear on web.” by Tribune staff reporter, Eric Benderoff.

Here’s a virtual article base on what these two prominent bloggers had to say. The questions are mine. The answers are from the article text. [Please note: These quotes are presented dynamically with an eye to maintaining the speakers’ original intent, despite this new context. My hope is to offer a closer glimpse of the blogger behind the words. The original, must-read article carries the full story.]

Leah, what does a conversation analyst really do?

“I pay attention to what people say online,” said Leah Jones. . . “My job is research and education,” Jones said. “I do a lot of small group training on social media.”

So, do you talk as well as listen?

“To get a true sense of what people are saying on blogs or in forums, we don’t get involved in the conversations,” Jones said. . . . “If I e-mail a blogger, I tell them ‘I’m Leah, I work at Edelman and I’m writing you because … ,’ ” she said.

So what are you looking to do with and for your clients?

“When we look at 2008, we’re asking, ‘What’s our news? What’s our online strategy? What are our conversation strategies?'” Jones said.

Jeremiah spoke on social media strategies as well.

Jeremiah, what’s the key to social media strategy?

“If you have a social media strategy, you need the right people,” said Jeremiah Owyang.

Why did you say 2008 will be an important year for social media?

“For the first time, you will start to see budgets set aside for social media strategies and processes,” he said. . . . Later he added that “As customers get more involved, expect their feedback to shape new products.”

Both of these bloggers are genuine and engaging conversationalists, who set aside their own thoughts to listen in to what we are saying, to learn where the conversation will go.

Leah and Jeremiah, you are B.A.D. Bloggers! Thanks for taking the conversation to the world of print.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. blogger page