Book Review (Part 1): Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

Robert Scoble: Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

This is part 1 of my review of this fascinating and insightful book on blogging.

I have run this blog for a while now. It might not look like it if you look at the archive section (but this is because I have changed who we had the blog with an imported the old blogs across without fully sorting the dates – so it looks like I have only started posting in August…D’oh!).

I am used to blogging, make a few posts, leave a few comments and you soon pick it up.

But the other day I was on Amazon.co.uk looking at the Seth Godin books. He is an other that I like and I have just finished the “All Marketers Are Liars” book (review to be posted soon!). I added the “Purple Cow” book to my cart as I wanted to read that for a while.

As Amazon does – it kindly tells me what else other customers who purchased this book also purchased (one of the best up-selling tools since “would you like fries with that?”) and also showed me a list of other books by this other.

Up on the list came “Naked Conversations: How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers.” For some reason, I didn’t really pay any attention to much else other than it was about blogs and I got it into my head that Seth had written this and it was therefore a new book that I didn’t know he had written.

Without thinking, I just added it to my shopping cart and went about my business.

It wasn’t until a few days later when the books arrived that I actually realised this was not a book by Seth Godin but was in fact written by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

Now I have to be honest with you – I would not have purchased this book if I had realised this when I was on Amazon, so I was a bit annoyed with myself for making such a school boy error.

That said – today, I have started to read the book. The kids are out with the Grandparents, and I have the unusual task of “nothing to do”. So I am sitting in the sun reading the book.

No doubt I will post a review about this book soon – but to give you a little advance warning – I quite like it. I haven’t read it all word-for-word, but have spent a few hours reading a chunk of it, skipping other parts and “lightly” reading the rest.

So – what things have “jumped out” at me so far?

I have to say that I really like practical examples. Real stories. I am not really a theories man. So I love the fact that scattered through out the book are lots and lots of examples of how companies (big and small, from Microsoft to the local coffee shop) have used blogging to enhance their business.

I also really like the way that they break down technology in easy-to-understand terminology – great for people that actually want to know about blogging.

The authors of the book say that it’s focus is to persuade you, the business owner, to start blogging. I must say that for me – it has worked. Sure I was already blogging – but this book has helped me to understand why I am doing so much more.

So I have bought into the theory that everyone of us should be blogging somehow.

So, when I have finished the rest of the book – I will finish my review. Let me though leave you with a few nuggets that I have picked up so far…

• The number of blogs has doubled every 5 months since 2003.
• Blogging has been used very successfully by Microsoft to start changing the way that the world sees them…no longer the evil tyrant that it used to be.
• Blogging helped Skype (25 million users in 19 months) and Firefox (25 million downloads in 99 days) set new records in company start ups.
• Blogging turns out to be the best way to secure a high ranking on Google
• Blogging has also helped the “little guy” – see www.englishcut.com.

Comments

[shel israel]

I am happy to hear that your "schoolboy error" has brought about an experience that seems to be both enjoyable and valuable. It is also the first time that either of us has been mistaken for Seth Godin. We both have more hair and fewer readers.