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.

While I’m holed up writing The Corporate Blogging Book, this blog debbieweil.com is being re-designed as the meta site - or portal - for all my sites (WordBiz.com, WordBizStore.com, EnewsletterStarterKit.com, BloggingStarterKit.com, etc.) and blogs (debbieweil.com and BlogWriteForCEOs.com).

Look for a Feb. 2006 re-launch with a brand new look. And yes, we’re building the whole thing on blogging software.

I can’t wait… Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the cover for my book. So waddya think?

The summer has flown by. I’ve been working on my book, tentatively titled The Corporate Blogging Book. BTW, that title is so stupidly obvious we’re thinking it just might work. Waddya think? Click here to vote on proposed titles for my book about corporate blogging. I want your thumbs up or down and your suggestions for a sub-title.

Which brings me to… the most helpful book I’ve read this summer (re-read, actually, on the advice of Penguin Portfolio publisher Adrian Zackheim): Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (Random House, 1994)

It’s a book about writing: how to get started, how to write well, getting published. It’s hilarious. Lamott is endearingly self-deprecating. She says out loud what many of us prefer not to admit… demons abound when you sit down to write. As she puts it:

“Then your mental illnesses arrive at your desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.”
Continue reading “Useful stuff I’ve read this summer… on book writing, blogging as a disruptive technology and the Web in 10 years”

Hmmm, how to celebrate. Well, I’m going to take a break… Hope you’ll indulge me. debbie’s blog is on hiatus while I write a book about corporate blogging for Penguin. Please take a minute to click on over to my book blog and also my blog about (what else) corporate blogging at BlogWriteForCEOs. It’s easier to leave comments on those blogs (both hosted by TypePad). Fire away as I’d love to hear from you!

While you’re here, you might want to troll some of the categories if you’re looking for information related to Blogging for business (a catch-all category); E-newsletters; Blogging events; and the always popular Free downloads. There’s lots of good stuff to re-discover. I’ve been reading past entries myself to find tidbits for the book. Oh, and as always, thanks for reading and for your comments. Have a great summer!

Had a blast this week moderating IABC’s blog panel here in D.C.

It was wonderful to meet several corporate bloggers face to face that I’ve been emailing and speaking with by phone: Paul Rosenfeld, Intuit’s blogging evangelist and the force behind the QuickBooks Online Edition blog; GM’s Bill Betts representing the Fastlane blog (Bill is Web Services Manager for GM’s global corporate communications office in Detroit); and Kevin Holland (VP in charge of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America’s ACCABuzz blog).

Paul flew in from Calif. for less than 24 hours (as did Bill) in order to participate. A huge thanks from me and from a filled-to-capacity and attentive audience. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to every one of your questions.

After offering a brief overview of corporate blogging, I posed some (vaguely) provocative questions and then let the three panelists do most of the talking. I framed our discussion around "fear of blogging" and asked each panelist in turn: "Why aren’t you afraid of blogging, why are you doing this and what results are you seeing?"

Interestingly, Steve Broback, creator of the Blog Business Summit, is thinking of using the same theme ("getting past the fear of blogging") for his Blog Business Summit Aug. 17 - 19, 2005 in San Francisco. (This is a  great event if you’re looking for a useful business blogging conference. I’ll be there as a speaker.)

Some of my questions for the panelists:

Thanks to IABC conference blogger Jeremy Popper for his write up of our session.

This is my favorite New Yorker cartoon ever. Thanks to Steve Rubel for the link and for the entertaining riff about the fact that he’s now something of a blogging celebrity… but still unrecognizable to the man on the street.

It’s official! I’ve just closed a deal with Penguin Portfolio to write a book about corporate blogging. Pub date is 2006. Penguin is the publisher of Seth Godin’s books, including Purple Cow and his new All Marketers Are Liars. As well as some other nifty business books. Of course, there will be a "book blog" to accompany the creation (and, er, promotion) of the book. I can’t promise that I’ll post every chapter as I write it, as Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are doing over at The Red Couch. But I’ll be asking for input and hope you’ll speak your mind. Stay tuned…

Bryan Eisenberg, a ClickZ colleague, has just published a compendium of his best columns in a new book: Call To Action: Secret Formulas To Improve Online Results. It’s terrific and I highly recommend it. Lots of articles on persuasion architecture (one of his favorite topics), as well as online copywriting, measuring success, etc. The book has been edited and organized into sections. A great resource. Sample chapter here (scroll down).

For a blast from the past, here are the almost 50 columns I wrote for ClickZ about B2B email marketing and e-newsletter marketing.

Been collecting these for a week or so.

• Ran across this nifty page on Robert’s Echo blog. Includes everything from the "origin" of blogs, stats on blog readership, recommended PR blogs, link to a Forrester Research executive summary, lists of internal and external corporate blogs and more.

• Another page with all things blog (including links to RSS tutorials and basic blog definitions) penned by the Singapore-based Rambling Librarian.

• Comprehensive list from Dave Taylor’s Intuitive Life blog with links to other articles.

• 101 writing tips from Kari Chisholm on writing a thought leadership blog. (He writes a grassroots advocacy blog.)

Remarkable stat courtesy of an HP Small Business Survey released last week. Thanks to CorporateBloggingBlog and Anita Campbell’s Small Business Trends blog for the link. Anita makes a key observation: while 10% of small biz owners may be including blogs in their marketing plans, half of all small businesses do not even have a Web site! The takeaway: think of a blog as a kind of Web site. If you need to make a choice? It’s a no-brainer. Launch a blog in minutes with a service like TypePad. You’ll instantly have a more powerful presence online than if you build a static site from the ground up.

I’m delighted to report that Gary Grates, VP Corporate Communications, North America for General Motors has accepted my invite to be the third panelist on IABC’s corporate blogging panel on June 27, 2005. (Here is the description of the session, part of IABC’s international annual conference in Washington DC.) Gary, who is known as a "thought leader" on change management and effective employee-management relations, is a regular contributor to GM’s Fastlane blog. The other two panelists are Paul Rosenfeld, GM of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online Edition and Kevin Holland, VP Communications of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and the force behind ACCABuzz.