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Cold Calling Related To Blogging Solutions

I think that it's important to reflect on cold calling for a blog product like 21Publish's solution. As a vendor, I do a certain amount of it (in additional to cold emailing) so that I can stay in touch with the market and understand how the business really works and what people really need. It can be frustrating when people don't respond, but it's extremely easy to understand why they don't. Being on the other side of the coin, I don't generally like to receive cold calls, but it has to do with the fact that I always feel like I'm being sold to. If I do decline a vendor, I try my best to respond (I can't always do that) and provide the vendor with a concrete reason why I am declining.

My personal approach to outbound cold calling is to try to make friends (with integrty and pure intentions). Yet there is a tricky balance between 1) educating someone about what you and/or your company does and 2) simply helping them. Recognize that by interrupting someone, one needs to add value and not waste people's time. A potential vendor must watch very carefully for those indicators. If you are the vendor, once you see that you are wasting someone's time, change gears or get out of the way. If you've wasted the person's time, guilt or something worse is your penalty.

I think the focus of cold calling at 21Publish is to help evangelize a little a bit about professional and organizational  blogging in general. Better yet, we should help people better understand how blogging is working in their sector. Blogging is still new to many people in professional environments so there should be some value to add in discussions. As one gets higher on the food chain figure out what a prospect's real business issues are related to deployment, website, organizational issues, online community building, etc. Softly educate about the firm and the product. Lay out options (even if it means *not* the 21Publish product).

While we'd ultimately like to get an online demo and in-depth discussion going with people interested in group blogging or blog communities, my group's intention is to help. Never did I use the word "sell" above. If the product doesn't sell itself, then we at 21Publish have to do a better job of marketing it, packaging it, pricing it, and doing R&D.

So changing gears a bit, if you are someone that receives a cold call or email from 21Publish, please recognize that this is the way my employees and I are trying to engage you. We are sincerely trying to add value and not sell to you. As an example, even after lengthly discussions with us and you decide to use our free solution,  we're still very happy too.

Personal Good News: Using Blog Community Intranets To Imbue Culture

Today I got an update that one of the 21Publish blog platform users (one of the major banks in the US) is having success using the blog community intranet features to discuss leadership and culture issues across a pilot of fiftyish employees. They are also using the platform to create working assignments for their new employees. I suspect we may see more uses of blogging like this because the real organizational value-add in this case is to be able to try to disseminate culture interactively (but privately) across a very geographically-spread organization.

Church Blogging

Stefan has made the following post on his blog. Thought it would be worthwhile to share here:

The protestant Church of Northern Germany called Nordelbien has launched a Church Blogging Community based on 21Publish today. As said before I strongly believe that blogging communities and group blogging will become more and more important for non-profit-orgs. They are a perfect means to tie bloggers together and to enforce the message of the organization.

A very valuable source of information on church blogging is bloggingchurch. It is there where I have also found a link to a Church Blogging Policies  put together by Brian Bailey.

Those interested in a quick plug for church blogging may be interested in the following article by Pastor Ken Gosnell, entitled "4 Ways Blogging Can Change Your Church". Local Texans may also be interested in Pastor Terry Storch's blog - he recently won book deal to cover church blogging.

New Blog For Me At BusinessWeek Online MBA Blog Community

I have a new MBA blog over at BusinessWeek Online here. I'm not only a vendor but also a user and participant in the community. I'm personally excited that the MBA blog community at BusinessWeek (* a blog community just being launched this afternoon on the 21Publish platform*) has turned out so nice looking! Also very happy to see Clear Admit (one of the influential blog sites in the MBA world) and other cool MBAs early in the process of signing up at BusinessWeek. Stefan has some personal words over at his blog which are quite visonary and address end-user generated content. Kudos to both the BusinessWeek and McGraw-Hill folks we've worked with to get this done!

Version 2.1.5 Update For 21Publish Blogging Service

Version 2.1.5 is online now! The new release brings you a whole set of features both for portal administrators as well users in the community.

New features on the administrative layer
========================================
-> Advanced profile options:
   Want your members to be able to publish an extended profile of
   themselves? Now you can enable them to.

-> RSS feed of your recent updates list:
   Now your members and visitors can easily subscribe to the "recent
   posts" list on your portal Homepage which makes it easy to keep up
   to date with community postings.

-> Extended default options:
   As a portal administrator you now have extended options to define
   default settings for your members accounts. RSS feeds, guestbooks,
   or availability of photoblogs are now settings you can determine as
   an administrator.

New features for your members
========================================
-> RSS feed by category:
   In the new version members can provide readers with means to
   subscribe to either an entire blog or certain categories within
   a blog.

-> Recent entries:
   Members can opt to display excerpts of their 5 latest entries in
   the sidebar of their blog.

-> Comment moderation:
   Afraid of inappropriate comments? With comment moderation it is
   easy for members to check and approve new comments before they
   are displayed on a blog.

-> Mobile and email blogging per category:
   Up to now all entries sent by phone or email went to the default
   category of a members blog. Now members can choose the category
   to which each mobile entry will be posted.

Features to come
========================================
Version 2.2 will be released soon and will include advanced tagging
(keyword) options making it much easier to navigate the content of the
site and to interact with web services and blog search engines such as
Technorati. Also it will bring the 21Publish community a completely
enhanced template structure that provides lots of new templates and
template design options.

How to make the most out of your 21Publish multi-user blogging community
========================================================================
Remember to check the features index that can be found on the right
hand side of your administration console navigation bar. The
alphabetical index listing of features will give you a good overview to
fully explore the potential of your 21Publish multi-user blog community.

We also recommend that you check the "Getting Started Guide" that you
can find as you log in to your administration console.

Now its time you take your own test drive of the new features. Feel
free to copy the respective parts of this newsletter to share with your
members. 

Happy blogging!

Your 21Publish Team
21Publish - Turnkey Group & Branded Blog Communities
http://www.21publish.com

Pick A Fight With Your Boss A Make A Professional Milestone

I try to do this at least once a week. Here's why.