Archive for the 'Consulting' Category

Blogging is dead

Published by
AndrewBoyd
at 30 October, 2007 in Blogging and Consulting. 5 Comments

…or is it?

I presented on social computing to a group of recruitment professionals last week. They assured me that blogging was dead - they’d been to a conference somewhere and it was common knowledge there - apparently.

Without getting antagonistic, I asked them if any of them blogged - they did not. I asked them if any of them read blogs on a daily basis - three did, and several others admitted to doing it on occasion.

So where did they get this from? With a little more discussion, it seems that a couple of presenters at the conference had discussed old-school “I woke up today with a pimple on my bum” personality blogging - and how it is on the way out. This is something that we’ve known for a while. People want relevance more than personality (unless the personality itself is the relevance). Where there is relevance and good content there are readers - for HR/recruitment bloggers like Alli as well as everyone else.

So is blogging dead? No. It’s just changing.

Am I a Blogging Consultant?

Published by
AndrewBoyd
at 29 September, 2007 in Blogging and Consulting. 2 Comments

…or a consultant who blogs?

I’ve found myself thinking about this since blogging at the Oz-IA conference. I met wiki consultants, mind-mapping consultants, social computing consultants, and, well a lot of consultant Information Architects (like myself). I didn’t meet any Blogging Consultants, but I’ve heard the term used here and there. I like to think of myself as a consultant who blogs, but I’m curious about what a Blogging Consultant is, and what they do.

I’ve advised clients and colleagues on blogging as part of wider communication/HR strategies, and find myself being drawn into a fair few conversations around the joys and pitfalls of corporate blogging. This is still only a small part of my consulting work and that of the local consultancy.

Where is the line?
So when does someone leave the consultant-who-blogs category and become a Blogging Consultant? Where is the line? I currently label myself a Consultant Information Architect (IA), but when you get right down to it I am a Consultant who does IA work. It is fairer to say that I use IA tools and methodologies to help clients and the consultancy. The bigger picture includes a heap of other skills that apply themselves anywhere in the consulting world, including:

  • business process modeling and re-engineering,
  • facilitation, and
  • communications strategy.

At the moment I’m undertaking a short engagement that, if I had to put a label on it, would be closer to technical business analysis/data modeling than IA. So I can’t say that I qualify as a Blogging Consultant on the “100% of time spent consulting on blogging” criteria.

Is it about intensity instead?
If being a Blogging Consultant is about applying expertise when required, regardless of total time spent, then I probably do qualify. When I’m talking about blogging, it is in the context of meeting a stated need - usually one of the following:

  • the need to raise awareness within a specific target audience,
  • to be identified as the employer of choice,
  • to appear more human/personal,
  • to show thought leadership in a given field, or
  • to sell a specific product - and this can be an item for sale, a methodology, or another free resource like a white paper.

Blogging is only one potential part of a solution that could also include a wiki, direct client contact, conference attendance/sponsorship, white papers, and  Marketing 1.0 tools (like brochures, newspaper advertisements, and t-shirts). My first question when I hear “we need a blog” is (and should always be) “What do you want to achieve?”. Blogs may be an answer, but my humble opinion is that they are rarely the only component of a holistic solution.

As an aside - I believe that there are too many consultants in the world who provide answers rather than solutions - I’m proud to work with the “solutions not answers” crew at SMS.
Is the label important anyway?
It is only important where people place an emphasis on it. There have been that many arguments over the years around “what is an IA?” that I’m not sure it is even worth considering the label as anything more than a convenience - it is a way of putting a circle around a bundle of services that may be shared between a client and a service provider. People get hung up on labels where there is money involved, and this is understandable if a little sad. It is not about what the business card says, it is about the good that you can do, and the difference that you can make. That said, like the black suit and white shirt, I understand that appearances are important. But a good tailor can only get you through the front door - it is in showing worth that we get to stay and do good.

My conclusion
…is that I’m not comfortable calling myself a Blogging Consultant at the moment. If I was working for myself, and there was work in corporate blog consulting, then I might think about using this as a promotional/marketing tool. How I would do this is an interesting post in and of itself for another day.

Seth’s idea of hard work

Published by
AndrewBoyd
at 4 September, 2007 in Blogging and Consulting. 0 Comments

In his Labor Day post, Seth Godin talks about the old-fashioned idea of hard work:

Your great-grandfather knew what it meant to work hard. He hauled hay all day long, making sure that the cows got fed. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about a worker who ruptured his vertebrae, wrecked his hands, burned his lungs, and was eventually hit by a train as part of his 15-year career at a slaughterhouse. Now that’s hard work.

He then defines the modern concept of hard work by these examples:

It’s hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It’s hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that’s remarkable. It’s hard work to tell your boss that he’s being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It’s easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It’s hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It’s hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data.

The hard bit - the hard work - is in taking the responsibility to step beyond the comfortable. To dare to be truly remarkable. This sounds trite, but trust me, the last thing that a consulting client needs from a consultant is to never hear a question, or never be told when things aren’t going well.

What is the modern conception of hard work for bloggers? I’m thinking it is something like this:

  • Don’t be shy about telling it the way you see it: Have the courage to tell your readers what they need to hear (if offering advice - and this needs to be taken in context of being prepared to back your advice up if there is follow-on legal action as a result).
  • Be prepared to be different: don’t follow the accepted wisdom if you can see a better way - life’s too short for beige.
  • Accept the risk: accept that failure is a real possibility. Most of the time (for bloggers at least) it isn’t fatal.
  • Look beyond the safe: the outwardly safe path is not necessarily the best long-term solution. It is one of those weird Zen paradox things that letting go of self-preservation allows for absolute concentration on the task at hand, sometimes ensuring preservation in situations where it is not a given. In many of his books, Seth Godin advises that the safe way is not really the safe path - that white collar workers are paid to take risks and rise above the widget-stamping process level to create something of real value. In this post, he says “The big insight: The riskier your (smart) coworker’s hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It’s the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and, perhaps, still going home at 5 PM) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.”
  • Think: think, and don’t be afraid of your thoughts. Cherish them, write them down, develop them.
  • Act: When the time comes, don’t blink. Act.

And the funny thing is that the “hardest working” professional bloggers probably work fewer hours than I do. Hard work isn’t.

John Chow’s Giveaway Comment Filler Concept

Published by
AndrewBoyd
at 10 May, 2007 in Blogging, Consulting and Marketing. 2 Comments

John Chow is giving away a dual-monitor video card to a lucky reader - all you have to do is leave a comment by the end of today.

I’m not sure that it is the first time it has been done, but it is the first time I’ve seen it work so successfully. My comment was number 418 (I think) - the reason I cannot tell is that the number of comments gets in the way of viewing the whole comment set :)

People love free stuff, and it is something that Seth Godin wrote about in Free Prize Inside. In consulting, we call it overdelivery - give the client more than they expect, and they’ll be impressed enough to ask for you next time.