3 book winners + quickie interview: blogs vs. e-newsletters

And the 3 lucky winners are...

Congrats on winning a copy of Michael McLaughlin's just-published Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants!

Deborah Kaufman of SmallPackages.com, New Paltz, New York

Steve Levine of TexMed.org, Austin, Texas

Debbie Rodgers of ParadisePorch.com, Nova Scotia, CANADA


Blogs vs. E-newsletters

I cornered two of the speakers at last week's B2B Lead Gen conference (see below) and asked why they were writing a blog and how it was different from publishing an e-newsletter.

Brian Carroll: "I'm not an editor but the blog gives me time to put down a quick thought. Also, you can find specific topics I've written about by searching the categories."

Brian publishes the B2B Lead Generation blog at http://blog.startwithalead.com/. He's gotten a book contract through writing his blog and is now working on a book by the same name: Start With a Lead.

His company, InTouch, does NOT publish an e-newsletter. Still, Brian emphasized that he does not promote InTouch (lead generation experts) in his blog.

Only the "About" link in the left-hand column leads you back to the company site.

In contrast...

Jeff Eisenberg: "Our ezine is supposed to be more unbiased and more reportorial. In our blog we can talk about what we do without seeming self-promotional."

Jeff publishes with his brother Bryan the ezine GrokDotCom and the long-running ClickZ column on ROI Marketing.

Their company, Future Now, recently started a blog at http://persuasion.typepad.com/


So what's the, er, right way to write a blog?

Both Brian and Jeff make interesting points about the rules for blog writing... and effectiveness.

Namely, there are no hard and fast rules. If your blog is accomplishing your business objectives, then you're doing something right.

Brian Carroll's writing isn't grammatically perfect (his high school English teacher might not approve). But it has brought him - and his company - increased recognition. Along with new leads for InTouch.

Jeff Eisenberg's company blog is written by employee and "persuasion architect" Anthony Garcia.

It gives Anthony a platform to divulge in a rambling sort of way what the folks inside Future Now think about when they're working with clients to improve conversion rates.

Um, weird stuff about how the brain works. I notice that they've omitted any link back to the Future Now site. Perhaps an omission?

Future Now's is a new blog so no business results to report yet.

All 21 gems from Sherpa's B2B Lead Generation Summit

If you clicked through last week's special issue and didn't find all 21 "gems" from MarketingSherpa's B2B Lead Gen conference here in Washington D.C., you can read them now at:

21 Gems from MarketingSherpa's B2B Lead Generation Summit

Yup, I took the time (and it does take more time) to piece together two long blog posts and put them up on the WordBiz site in the article archive.

I had to update the verb tenses and take out phrases that work on a blog ("I'm gonna share these gems with you") but don't seem quite as appropriate in an article.

Bottom line: I can feel something changing in the air. It's just a heck of a lot easier to write and publish to a blog. And the content is just as permanent.

Or get the 21 nuggets in my blog:
Oct. 20, 2004: 21 gems from Sherpa's B2B Lead Gen Summit Oct. 21st: The rest of the B2B Lead Gen gems