Top 5 Books for Communicators (and Business People) - #3

So, for the #3 book, we're going to go *way* back to 2006 (seemingly an eternity ago for communications theory). While this isn't the oldest book on the list (we'll actually get to that one when we hit the #1 book next week), the #3 book -- Naked Conversations -- is still a landmark book in the field of social media.

Authored by Robert Scoble (one of the early adopters of social media, and still a frequent blogger at scobleizer.com) and Shel Israel (who penned the #5 book on this list), Naked Conversations is one of the first books to analyze the impact blogging can have on a business.

Two quick asides: First, as you look at Robert Scoble's blog, you're struck by how ... stark ... it is. There's no flash, no intricate designs. It's done (I think) on Wordpress, and it's a great reminder that even today, content is kind. When Scoble posts, people read (most bloggers would kill to get 1/10th his traffic). In the end, it doesn't matter what cool things you have on your website; people are drawn to killer content.

Second, I think an awful lot of people throw the term "social media" around, expecting that it just refers to the channels (Facebook, blogs, etc.). While those channels are certainly included, I think a hallmark of social media is also the transformation from more formal communication to more conversational - and, blogs do that really well. Still, social media includes more than just Facebook, Twitter and blogging. The key word there is "social."

On to Naked Conversations. One of the key messages of the book is that people don't trust big companies. The first company cited is Microsoft, which - for many years - was termed "the Evil Empire." In more recent years, the fervor around that nickname has died down considerably; program manager Joshua Allen, Microsoft's first blogger, attributes blogging as having had the most impact on that shift in perception.

Once Allen began blogging, his boss received an internal email demanding he be fired. This request would continue. All were ignored. When the number of bloggers reached 15, Legal started worrying. By March 2005, there were 1500 active bloggers at Microsoft. "Legal is still worrying," Allen says., "but we haven't had anyone do something so incredibly stupid that it required a blogging policy and none has ever been issued."

This all goes back to primary tenet of blogging -- people will not do stupid things just because they have new tools. Throughout history, new tools have been routinely introduced; smart people don't suddenly do dumb things because of that.

In the book, a total of six characteristics are identified, and referred to as the "Six Pillars of Blogging." Although some communication channels exist that have some of these; none have all, besides blogging (and, probably, micro-blogging, as well):

1. Publishable (anyone can publish a blog; for free, even).
2. Findable (through search engines, technorati, you can find blogs by subject, author or both).
3. Social (as mentioned before - the opportunity to comment and have one-to-one or one-to-many conversations simultaneously).
4. Viral (information spreads faster through blogs than through other channels).
5. Syndicatable (most/all (?) blogs have RSS enabled, which makes it infinitely easier to stay up to speed on what you're reading (shameless pitch - read my post on RSS)).
6. Linkable (most blogs will constantly link to other blogs/sites to keep the information chain going; it's safe to say linking is one of the most important things blogs can do (and that helps with the viral spreading of information)).

I often feel, reading these books, like succeeding in social media is like capturing lightning in a bottle. For each success you read (Skype and Firefox, for example, effectively *launched* using nothing more than blogs), there are countless of others that fail. Certainly, one of the most accessible aspects of Web 2.0 tools is that - for the most part - they're free, and therefore, it's not crushing to start over. Imagine if Skype had launched in a traditional way - printed brochures; broadcast advertising - and then, what if it had failed? Nowadays, that could be a death knell for a company.

Like most of the books on my list, this book is chock full of great, real-life examples. You can read about large businesses, small businesses and how they blog and the impact those blogs have had on their success. You get to read about companies that don't do it correctly (and how the impact *that* has). There are no rules to blogging (as of yet), but there are certainly accepted best practices -- and you get to see many of them through this book.

Naked Conversations wasn't groundbreaking - the authors admit as much in the Introduction to the book. They readily admit that, quite a few years earlier, another book had laid much of the groundwork towards this transformation (and that book is still coming on the countdown ...), but this was one of the first books to be written during the rise in popularity of the blog; and when a number of companies were in the process of starting to include blogs in their corporate strategies (for external audiences; even now, many companies don't see the value of blogging internally, regrettably).

For example, here are three images (from 2006, 2007, 2008) that show the rise in popularity of blogs. You can see, clearly, from 2004-2006, there was a marked increase in the number of blogs created daily and the cumulative number of blogs. While there are still a great number being created each day, the rampant increase has slowed slightly.

It's no surprise this book was written when it was - companies were searching for a knowledgeable voice to lead them, and they found it. What's great is that the guidelines and examples presented in this book are still applicable today. There's a reason this is #3 on the list, and it's a must-have for any communicator.