Blog Relations

Very nice of someone to write a blog about how you can travel across the USA and always park overnight in a Wal-Mart car park for free – nice for Wal-Mart that is.

I started thinking about all the other amazing things there are to see in this vast country of ours. And then I started thinking about how Wal-Mart — one in every town, practically — lets you park overnight for free.

Pity it reads just like typical PR rubbish. Hold on a minute, it is PR rubbish! It turns out that this idea was cooked up by the Edelman agency – the same Edelman whose boss writes a blog, and that hired a slew of PR bloggers.

Interesting to hear the take on this in the For Imediate Release Podcast. It gives an impression of the confusion this debacle has sowed in the PR World. Presenter Shel Holtz rightly expresses sorrow and regret that Edelman should cock-up like this, then co-presenter Neville Hobson reports on how nice it was to meet Richard Edelman at a blogger meet-up in London last week. Presumably Neville recorded his piece before this news broke.

Edelman reminds me of running journalism courses in various parts of the world. The students nod and say lots of intelligent things in the discussion, but when they go out and do their stuff, they come back with material that does the opposite of all that we talked about. This is exactly what Edelman does in the blogosphere.

On Monday I told Neville Hobson about my involvement in the Exbiblio blog. It was late in the evening, and he took a glance at it, said it looked interesting, and that he would return to it in the morning. Rather embarrassingly, three of my posts had vanished by the morning. This was particularly awkward, as I had told the world that I had a free hand to write as I saw fit. I am glad to say that they are back now. The key post is about an extremely sensitive subject concerning the founder.

I think this tale could have been interpreted in either a positive or a negative light, depending on whether you think it was terrible that the posts were taken down, or great that they were put back. It’s clear to anyone who reads the blog that there as been some misunderstanding and 24 hours of deciding what to do – a classic PR muddle. However, Martin King has done much to put things right by explaining what happened.

Neville has very generously seen the story in the best light possible, and my thanks are due to him. I do hope that other companies will take note of what Neville says about the best way to communicate difficult news in the modern media. What he says is very true, but hard to undertake.

The Exbiblio Blog has gone live.

As I have mentioned, Exbiblio is a Seattle based start-up. I’m co-blogging with staffer Adam Behringer, and am giving the outside view.

I hope that my opening salvo of posts reveal what an unusual project this is.

Exbiblio asked for openness, and I’ve goen for broke, being frank and I hope provacative in the right way.

Apologies for the long period of silence. We haven’t been on holiday. Nor have we given up blogging. Quite the opposite. In fact, Blog Relations is just getting over the shock of having a client that is employing us more or less full time right now, and, hopefully, at least part-time over the coming months.

When Matthew and I set up Blog Relations about a year ago, we had visions of a flood of British businesses signing us up to chart their progress and help cultivate their online reputation in the blogosphere. We soon realised that that we were sadly mistaken – apart from anything, the openness that the concept implied was completely alien to British business managers. We decided that our future lay as a podcast publishing company, hence Storynory for kids. We’ve had some nice small jobs on the consulting side, for which we are grateful, but all the promising meetings and discussions for longer term business relationships came to nothing. There’s even been a couple of juicy jobs that we thought were in the bag, but somehow weren’t.

When I received a call on my mobile from somebody called Martin in Seattle, I had just an inkling that his idea of us writing for him from London was so crazy, that he must be serious. When the unasked-for advance arrived in our bank account, before we had even done any work, it became apparent that this guy was of an entirely different breed from les autres. At least, it shut up my friends who told me that the mysterious American was far too good to be true, and that he must be a lunatic, time-waster, fraudster, etc.

My trip to see his company, Exbiblio, in Seattle, was a fabulous week in which I was made to feel like a long lost friend, rather than a outside ‘consultant’ for want of a better word. I was met at the airport by this modest dotcom multi-millionaire in his anything but flashy VW, and immediately taken out to a fabulous sushi restaurant for a long evening of wide-ranging conversation.

This last week, back in London, I’ve been working fast and furiously on a blog design with Exbiblio’s Adam Behringer. The Instant Messages have been flying back and forth. Adam’s going to be relating the insider view on the Exbiblio blog – and I’m going to be the outsider. If, as might just be possible, the blog turns into a book about the story of a start-up, Blog Relation’s Matthew Lynn, will play a bigger part.

I’m looking forward to working with Adam, who has a keen eye for design, and who takes some great photographs (as well as being able to code just about anything).

It’s a brave and interesting idea to have an outside blogger with a sense of distance from the company (10 hours flying distance, in fact). Hopefully, I will see the big picture and make sure that the story unfolds in a way that comes alive to people who are not immersed in Exbiblio’s interesting ambitions and culture. It seems to be a company that has taken openness to heart, and I think it’s going to be a very full and frank account that should, if it works, strike a cord with people in business in all fields.

I will be dropping in on Exbiblio about once a month. I see it like watching a baby grow. If you are an adoring parent, watching every day, you don’t notice the fast rate of change so much. The grandparents who see the baby once a week or so, notice the changes much more sharply.

This is a fabulous opportunity to prove that the concept of an outside blogger has a lot to offer. I’ll let you know the blog URL when it goes ‘live.’

P.S. Now live at Blogs.Exbiblio.Com