StevenSilvers.com

Get on President Obama's email update list

Drop a note to WhiteHouse.Gov and you'll be added to President Obama's email blast list.

The White House is using official letter-looking emails -- like this one about health care reform -- "as a way to directly communicate about important issues and opportunities." 

The email letters include links to other White House web sites designed to educate and build support for various administration initiatives.

You can get on the official Obama email updates list by clicking here.
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Fear and Loathing in Lost Media

Bulldog Reporter notes how news companies hate that Google doesn't share the money it makes by selling ads tied to news blurbs it "scrapes" to create Google News.  Experts say it would take only a few lines of code to prevent Google from indexing content from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and hundreds of the other sources it gleans from.

So why don't they?
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Most popular media sites for bloggers

TechCrunch compiled this list of the 50 media sites that bloggers link to most. The top ten sites:

1. YouTube
2. New York Times
3. BBC News
4. CNN.com
5. MSN
6. guardian.co.uk
7. Washington Post
8. Yahoo! News
9. Reuters
10. Los Angeles Times

(Thanks to The Media Is Dying, a very good media junkie Twitter feed.)
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An official blog management process

If you're wondering what to include in your organization's social media strategy, take a look at the pragmatic evaluation-and-response approach outlined in this U.S. Air Force Blog Assessment Chart:

Click here for a PDF version of this chart.

Buzz words for a new, more newer new world

2.0 ... For a second straight year, marketing executives surveyed by Anderson Analytics said they were sick of hearing Web 2.0, a term coined in 2004 to mean a better designed, collaborative Internet.  Today two-point-oh means anything that's supposed to be better than yesterday's anything.  There's Wine 2.0. Sales 2.0. Beanie Babies 2.0.  Even Reuters reports how the global financial crisis has everyone "hoping that Capitalism 2.0... will result in a more equal society."  Sounds good.  But we're already looking forward to Capitalism 3.0.

Change ... Okay, you saw this one coming.  But it's astonishing to hear so many politicos, talking heads and executives talking about change like we just discovered gravity. Maybe they're talking about Change 2.0.  It's possible the word has already become a metaphor for unrealistic expectations: After basing his entire campaign on "change," President Obama used the word only once in his inauguration speech.

Transformational ... Remember when companies stopped selling stuff and started selling solutions? Transformational could become that big.  That means solutions companies will start selling transformational solutions.

And that means we're a fast buzzboat to Transformational Change 2.0.  You heard it here first.
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Links to Google search for:

• "Transformational Change" (158,000 results prior to this post)
• "Change 2.0" (22,000 results prior to this post)
• "Transformational Change 2.0" (No results prior to this post)

Best of Scatterbox - 2009 Edition

Based on comments, links and other highly unscientific measurements, here are the top ten Scatterbox posts from the last year:

Five things you didn't realize you learned from Obama's victory

Good intentions aren't good crisis management

Best worst excuse to avoid jury duty: Your studly hotness

Big brand doody from the toilet paper wars

What's missing from your communications plan

The low risk, high rise of phony grassroots groups

Hate mail and other comments from our readers

Blah Blah Nation: PR people promote the value of blogging by boring readers to death

John Edwards scandal shows conflicting truths about mainstream media

How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

... Have an idea or link to suggest? Send to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Scatterbox is Twittering

Drop me a note or follow me at http://twitter.com/StevenSilvers.
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Scatterbox blog makes the list

The AdAge Power 150* ranks Scatterbox by Steven Silvers as one of the top 30 PR-focus blogs in the U.S., and one of the top 50 worldwide.

All I can say is thanks. With 188 million blogs out there, I'm honored by the interest and time you've given my little corner of the Internet.

Keep those comments and links coming to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

And keep an eye out for my new blogzine, ReputationAssets.com, launching in early 2009.

Happy New Year.

Steve
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* Thanks to Matthew Watson of From PR to Eternity blog for slicing and dicing.

Steve's Blog Basics: Collecting and reading blogs

People ask me all the time about blogs. Some ask how they work. Some ask if blogging between consensual adults is legal in their state.

So I'll start at the beginning. My apologies to the Web 2.0 Social Media Engagement Consultants who will accuse me of oversimplifying. I am.

HOW TO COLLECT AND READ THE BLOGS YOU WANT

Think of blogs -- short for "web logs" -- as time-stamped Internet journals that can include text, pictures or anything else you can put online. New "posts" are distributed as electronic news feeds in the same way Associated Press delivers breaking news or BusinessWire distributes company news releases.

The Internet technology that does this is called RSS -- for "Real Simple Syndication." And it is.

There are many ways to read blogs. You can go to the blog site itself, and bookmark it on your browser. Or you can have new posts sent automatically emailed to you. You can also add blogs to your personalized homepage like Yahoo, just as you would include local news and weather forecasts.

My preference is to use an online reader. My personal favorite is Bloglines, a free service that lets you create your own online newspaper by compiling content from both news media and bloggers -- any web site that has a feed. And that's almost everybody.

Bloglines is owned by Ask.com and has been steadily adding new features, including an iPhone version.

There are other very popular "blog aggregators" available, including NewsGator and Google Reader. Microsoft Outlook 2007 also can collect syndicated feeds and put them in folders in the way you handle email.

Play around with the different RSS collectors until you find the one you like. And feel free to let me know how it comes out.

Next up: Does my company need a blog? And why does my eye twitch like that?

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The tools I use to publish this blog.

It's been three years since I launched Scatterbox with a post about soft-porn corporate training videos. Since then I've gotten many questions about what tools I use to publish my blog. Here they are:

• Internet-based blog host - Typepad
• Domain host and mapping - Network Solutions
• Desktop blog publishing - Zoundry Raven
• Blog search engine - Lijit
• RSS feed management - FeedBurner
• Email subscriptions - FeedBurner
• Cheap stock photos & graphics - iStock.com
• Photo & graphics editing - CompuPic Pro
• Web browser - Mozilla Firefox3
• Windows capture - Screen Hunter
• Content syndication - Newstex
• Audience tracking & statistics - SiteMeter
• Cable Internet - Verizon
• Equipment -- HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook PC
• High-speed Internet access - Comcast Digital
• Wireless Internet - Verizon PCL card
• Online music service - Rhapsody

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