Debbie Weil is a corporate blogging and social media expert, online marketing consultant, speaker and author of The Corporate Blogging Book (Portfolio). She consults with large companies, CEOs and senior executives on how to create blogs that connect with customers and attract media attention.

Just stumbled across Worthwhile, a sleek-looking new online magazine “for readers who seek to make a difference while making a living.” It’s really a group blog by 8 authors who are terrific writers. It reminds me that good blogging is really about good writing. Co-founders are Anita Sharpe and Kevin Salwen, veterans of The Wall Street Journal and winners of a Pulitzer Prize. The other contributors are David Batstone; David Weinberger (co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto); Halley Suitt (she’s an absolute nut; I’ve met her and I love her. Halley’s personal blog is… well, it can be raunchy); Kate Yandoh; Rebecca Ryan; and Tom Peters (co-author of In Search of Excellence). Oops. I said something not-so-complimentary recently about Tom Peters’ home page. Maybe I’ll take another look…

I’m a sucker for this kind of resource page. Check out the dozens of well-organized links to marketing resources at MarketingTerms. Caveat: the section on business blogs is a bit sparse and needs to be updated. Thanks to this week’s issue of SoftwareCEO e-newsletter for the pointer.

I confess… I was so eager to snatch up [deleted]@gmail.com (sorry, don’t want to give it out) I ventured onto ebay about 2 weeks ago, typed in “gmail account” and started bidding. Having never bought anything on ebay it took me a few tries. Oh, goody, I thought; it will only cost $3.00. But I kept losing the auctions. Finally I realized someone was bidding it waaay up at the last minute. So I gulped and bid $21. OK, I’m a little embarrassed. I spent 20 bucks on something that’s free?

But I really wanted that email address…

Eric Eggertson writes from Canada: “People are scrambling to get the best e-mail addresses (most plain-English titles aren’t available). Is that because Google isn’t offering them, or someone has snapped them all up? (Seems like) everyone who had to settle for a Hotmail or Yahoo name that was obscure and full of meaningless numbers now has a chance to get a gmail account that is closer to what they want.”

And how is gmail? My initial infatuation is wearing off. It doesn’t have a “save draft” function (really annoying). And now that Yahoo has upped its storage and revamped its interface I’m not convinced gmail is the next new thing. More later about the ads showing up in my gmails…

In fact, I just published the latest issue of WordBiz Report. You can read it here. Or jump right to the lead article, a case study on why the Air Conditioning Contractors of America’s blog is NOT, er, cool…

My colleague Nick Usborne has been writing about e-newsletters recently. His articles are right on point about the importance of online newsletters or ezines containing news (as opposed to promotion) and being written in a “personal, genuine way.” Write a Real Newsletter and Be Personal in Your Newsletters.

Here’s a great FAQ page from FeedBurner as well as links to other resources explaining RSS on CNN, Wired Magazine and Forbes.

I’ve been touting the advantages of “subscribing” to blogs via newsreading software. No email is involved so you sidestep the problem of spam filters and undelivered e-newsletters. I use and recommend NewsGator as a newsreader (aka news aggregator) for its simple interface.

But the truth is there hasn’t been an easy way to figure out how many people are “subscribed” to a blog. Nor exactly who they are. In contrast, you know who signs up for your ezine or e-newsletter because you are collecting email addresses. When you send out an HTML newsletter, most email service vendors offer you detailed reporting on who opened a particular issue, what articles they clicked on, etc. Needless to say, marketers love this.

Now comes a new concept from a service called FeedBurner: “daily circulation.” It’s an approximation of the number of subscribers accessing the news feed from your blog on a given day. Read more about blog stats in (you guessed it) FeedBurner’s blog. Warning… gets pretty technical. But this is great news for those of us trying to quantify the ROI of a business blog.

A recent issue of TIME magazine invites you to meet Joe Blog: “Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs? Because they’re fast, funny and totally biased.”

Author Lev Grossman describes blogs as “amateur websites that provide news, information and, above all, opinions to rapidly growing and devoted audiences drawn by nothing more than a shared interest or two and the sheer magnetism of the editor’s personality.”

But there’s oh so much more to blogging than creating an alternative to mainstream news media. The challenge of a business blog is to find the line between informal & unedited… vs. authentic, credible and useful. It may take some time till you find your voice. But once you hit your stride, you’ve created a powerful platform for communicating online with your prospects and customers.

Want a meaty introduction to business blogging… including what to write about and how to say it? Sign up for The Uncool Blogging Seminar, our 90-minute audio/Web conference on July 1, 2004. Included in your ticket are a ton of extras you can use as learning tools. Thanks to Lois Ambash of Metaforix@ for the pointer to the TIME article.

Picture Seth Godin’s warehouse loft about 30 miles north of New York City. It’s a cool space in the unlikely location of commuter town Dobbs Ferry, NY. The building sits a stone’s throw from the busy MetroNorth commuter railway and only a few yards more from the scenic Hudson River. A train trundles by noisily every 10 minutes… interrupting Seth as he speaks. [Yes, that's Seth and me in the photo. And my home page on the screen behind us.]

He stops talking, waits, hardly notices the interruption… then continues his lively presentation. Ironic, huh?! One of the tenets of permission marketing (Seth’s term) is that people hate to be interrupted by marketing messages. Instead engage them step-by-step in a conversation (politely asking permission along the way) and you’re much more likely to win new customers and sales.

But there we were a week ago today, leaning forward to catch every word, leaning back during the clackety-clack of each train passing, then leaning in again. A few tidbits from Seth’s (yes) engaging live seminar…

First, no standard fare at this event for creative marketers. There was sushi for lunch followed by interesting, “healthy” snacks (candies and weird crackers). We dutifully nibbled when Seth passed them around. But the best part were the Web site reviews.

Seth asked each of the 30 or so participants to volunteer their home page URL. Then he offered an impromptu critique. Let me amend that, he unapologetically ripped into every one of our sites. It really was refreshing…

His key tips:

- What do you want your visitor to do? That’s your banana. Make it absolutely clear. If you don’t, your home page doesn’t work.

- Give visitors a choice of (no more than) two options and make it blindingly easy to choose.

- Why does everyone put so much stuff on their home page? Less is more… in fact, copy a site design you like. One of his favorites is Apple. No secret here. Take a look at Apple. Now look at Seth’s site.

I could go on but he told us not to take notes and I snuck these few onto my little pad. It was a fun, provocative day. I think he’s doing another seminar in September, if you’re interested.

Have you ever been… paralyzed about posting an entry in your blog? I’ve been noodling over a post to describe Seth Godin’s seminar this week in his warehouse loft in Dobbs Ferry, NY. He was terrific. About 30 folks there, including a guy who flew in from Bangkok and another from South Africa. Hmmm… I need to be witty and sharp to match the tenor of the event, n’est-ce pas? It really was cool. The takeaway was his new book, Free Prize Inside, in its collectible cereal box. More later… A tip of the hat to Conference Calls Unlimited for sponsoring my ticket. Thanks!

Oh, and this is NOT the way to create content for your blog. Don’t procrastinate; don’t obsess. Just do it!

Just ran across an informative interview with Greg Reinacker, president of NewsGator, in therssweblog. Greg talks about “our online habits” (like reading RSS feeds on a mobile phone or PDA) and how that’s “changing” our lives. I really like NewsGator’s tagline: “The content you want. Any time. Any place. Any device.” Also worth a look: the long list of blogs on the right-hand side of the interview page referenced above. As for unraveling RSS, I know the term is still meaningless to most. Best way I can describe it is a new way to publish and distribute content online without using email.