The ability to criticize, critique and respond to something is only a tweet away. You don’t need comments turned on to do this.

Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText and board member for SlideShare has an interesting post responding to criticism placed on Pfizer mostly for turning off comments on the their newly launched SlideShare account.

It’s encouraging to see regulated companies like Pfizer move further and further into the social space, even if it’s baby steps.

Ross points out the additional difficulties that a regulated business has, but something he didn’t reference was that Pfizer is not the first to take a no comments allowed approach. Several big companies with corporate blogs don’t allow comments including Google and Microsoft. Apple doesn’t even have a blog to turn comments off of.

The trade off of turning comments off is the obvious lack of engagement which makes it more difficult to build readership and reach.

Regulations aside, managing comments can reach a point of diminishing returns (depending on your goals).

Seth Godin was the first person I remember to turn on comments (when they had been off), decided he didn’t like it, found it too distracting and then turned them back off. People got upset but then everything returned to normal.

Years ago the highly popular blog, Boing Boing had to disable comments because the amount of traffic they were getting was crashing their site. Once they could afford better more reliable hosting they turned them back on. Recently the major tech blog, Engadget turned off comments earlier this year because of reader unruliness and then turned them back on when they implemented a more moderated system.

When I start a YouTube account for clients, depending on the nature of the channel, I often recommend clients to default to comments off because YouTube can attract some of the worst trolls out there and YouTube’s moderating system is horrible.

If your goals are reach and awareness of your messaging, turning off comments can stunt the growth of that channel but I believe is can be an acceptable approach.

But if your goals are to build a community and engage with your readers comments are an important part of that.

Disclosure, Microsoft is a client.

Photo credit By Balakov

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The blogs stated purpose is :

This blog is dedicated to examining the cataclysmic changes social media is having on business. We’re not trying to predict its future, we’re trying to help create it.

Report Card

The first quarter of 2010 has been our best year yet and March was by far our best month ever.

For Q1 our unique visitors was up 129% and overall site traffic was up 122% over the previous quarter. New visits and time spent on site have all increased. However page visits are down slightly by 2.51% and bounce rate has increased by 0.23%.

March saw over 300% growth year over year in unique visitors and overall site traffic. March 2010 we had over 17,000 page views and over 13,000 unique visitors. As of March 31 we have 2,149 subscribers to our RSS feed.

Also of note; we are currently #69 on the Adage Power 150. And the LEGO pictures we’ve been using for most posts seem to be a hit.

Twitter and related sources (Twitterfeed, Hootsuite, Tweetmeme, etc) and direct traffic (most of which is from Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic) are the single largest source of traffic. Organic search is down to only 12% of our over all referring traffic.

Here is a PDF of the March analytics report. Let me know if you’d like the full quarter report.

Community

The New Comm Biz Twitter account has 289 followers and is on 36 lists but right now the account is just a feed with no engagement and only minimal content besides the blog posts. We need to develop a solid strategy for the Twitter account that adds value beyond an alternative to RSS.

The New Comm Biz Facebook page has 184 fans but a significantly higher amount of engagement since the launch of our Drive book giveaway. I am personally much happier with the Facebook page and its direction than the Twitter account. After the Drive book contest we will begin looking for other ways to interact with and add value to our Facebook community.

Bellow you will see our Facebook stats. I am considering doing some  light Facebook advertising to see what kind of an effect this has. We received $100 in free Facebook advertising from a conference so will probably give it a try.

This week I also announced the New Comm Biz Social Newsletter. This will be an interactive newsletter that we mail to readers who sign up. We have even created it’s own dedicated page.

Future Considerations:

Disquss has been a little buggy at time. I like much of it’s functionality and cross platform, community nature, it’s been marking a lot of legitimate people as spam. If things get worse I may switch back to WordPress’ native commenting system. How do you like the current commenting system compared to other blogs you comment on?

At some point if Twitter, Facebook and our list of contributors grows I may look at getting help with community management. If you have any thoughts on this let me know.

Content

With the addition of the Social Newsletter page and the Blog With Us page I have successfully replaced all of my personal content and migrated it to my /tacanderson Posterous blog.

Our most popular posts are posts about Twitter. Not surprising since that’s where most of our traffic comes from. Of our top 10 posts for the month four were about Twitter and contained Twitter in the headline. Two posts were about social business. One post was the original review of the book Drive. The other three were about personal branding, the story of the employee who had to delete his LinkedIn profile and the fictional post I wrote about social media dystopia.

We posted a total of 30 posts in March 28 from myself and two very popular posts from Jason. I feel that Jason’s post have been a great addition to the blog and I am now going to more actively pursue contributors and guest posts. I have added a Blog With Us page and will add more prominent placement to the home page and Facebook page.

If any of you wish to contribute to the blog please send me an email: tac@newcommbiz.com

This post will make the 700th blog post and we currently have 1,658 comments.

My request to you my board of stakeholder I would ask for your guidance and recommendations. The open questions are how to better use Twitter and Facebook to add value to our readers, how we can get more contributors to the blog as well as any other recommendations you may have.Similar Posts:

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But now we have our biggest announcement yet. People keep telling me I should offer an email newsletter and start building my email database. I’m doing one better.

Announcing the New Comm Biz Social Newsletter.

Every month I will print a newsletter with completely original content (maybe a few highlights from the blog) and I will mail it to your house or place of work.

Think this is an April Fools joke? Maybe a little, but I’m serious. Send me an email tac@newcommbiz.com with your mailing address and “New Comm Biz Newsletter” in the title then get ready for the most social newsletter you’ve ever seen.

I’ve got a couple tricks up my sleeve and this won’t be your regular dead tree print, it will really be a social, interactive newsletter? How am I going to pull off this magic? You’ll have to wait to find out.

Still think it’s an April Fools joke? Try me

While you’re at it feel free to join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit by Brintam
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Victus Spiritus by Mark Essel

Victus Spiritus
On Twitter @VictusFate

Last 3 posts:

Positive Karma, little things that change the world for the better

Social Web “Kingdoms” Collapse as Fast as they Expand, a Sign that REST’s Days are Numbered

The Stark Contrast of Enthusiasm versus Apathy

Visceral Business by Anne McCrossan

Visceral Business — Social business design and management
On Twitter @Annemcx

Last 3 posts:

Metadata, messages, stories and conversations

The synaptic fluid of social business

Linchpin and the missing link

The Flickr Blog

Flickr Blog
On Twitter @flickr

Last 3 posts:

Lisbon: Then and Now

Earthquake in Chile

Luzinteruptus
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Using Flickr or YouTube like a blog isn’t anything new but some people like Thomas Hawk take it to a new level. I know PR Newswires Michael Pranikoff uses Delicious as a blog even though it’s a bookmarking service.

What about a collection of short witty reviews on Amazon? (h/t YC) I present Dr. M von Vogelhausen with over 100 wonderfully random and amusing reviews on Amazon (UK)

Here are but a few gems:

A review for the Mastrad Ice Cube Tray

Since I was an infant I have been entranced by ice. I loved to spend hours staring into the stillness of its depths, as my family searched the small ads for hidden messages from Enid Blyton. However, the mystery of the origin of the humble ice cube has always eluded me. After several frustrated visits to the north pole, and an ill-judged expedition to a place that has since been stripped of its name, I found a faded picture of the Mastrad Ice Cube Blue Tray on the window of an abandoned snood store within earshot of the Slough Barrier Reef. Its worn edges shifted slightly in the wind like a tennis player’s pride. I received it on a Thursday; I loaded it; I had cold drinks on the Friday. O tempora, o mores! Water, but not water; hard but slippery. I looked over at Jasper, my dog and my editor, and his eyes seemed to say, “Ice…ice…baby.” He is presumptious.

The Chef’s Choice Elevtric Diamond Hine Sharpener

The door to the old Roberts house was slightly open when I arrived. I entered cautiously, hearing the creaking of the hinges echo in the waiting darkness. The house had seen better days, and there was a faint smell of sherbert lemons in the hallway as I guided myself towards the kitchen. I took a deep breath before entering, and adjusted my panama hat to a more jaunty angle.

The kitchen was just as they had left it: on the worktop, half-chewed Shreddies arranged in a collage depicting a scene from “Diagnosis Murder”; scrawled across the cabinets in jam, a haiku about penguins. A day like any other, then, interrupted by some mysterious event. I turned to leave, and stopped. Beside the microwave, I saw it.

The Chef’s Choice Electric Diamond. Of course, I didn’t know that then. All I could say was that I was in the presence of an object of boundless power and majesty. What happened next has been well documented by the knife-sharpening media. The upshot was that I took it home; and now it sits near my microwave, waiting, always waiting, for the bluntness. Recommended without reservation.

And for those feeling undue pressuer this week, the pressure washer:

Kärcher K2.36M+ Pressure Washer and T50 Patio Cleaner

I purchased this little monkey based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Nonetheless, I have been much gratified by it. Essentially, not wanting to beat around the trees or go around the burning bush, I have a lot of pressure (such is the lot of the Thames Valley Icelandic Chocolatiers Association secretary) And I often wish the cleaning away of this pressure were easier. The Karcher K2.36M+ washes away stains and spillages, yes, and if this impresses you I am both sad and happy, and uncomfortable (my belt is too tight). However it does nothing with pressure itself, which hangs around mockingly, its tongue out, holding a sign saying “you can’t deal with this”. In this respect only, the item failed to make me happy. In other ways – its colour, the way it sat, brooding, on my carpet; its name, when spoken aloud inside a grain silo in Minnesota – in these ways, it finds triumph and beats it until it itself is beaten. Highly recommended.

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I mostly blog about how businesses can use social media in their strategy and the trends companies need to be watching. I thought I’d should address the personal benefits of using social media. This is the first of those posts.

I hate terms like “Personal Brand” and really only tolerate “Thought Leadership” because I haven’t been able to think of anything better. Well today I did. Be More You. Feel free to use it.

How should you use social media personally? Be More You.

At Waggener Edstrom everyone takes a personality profile test. This is mine.

What you see on the right hand side is me in my normal preferred state. Blue is attention to detail/analytical, Green is support and group harmony, Yellow is high energy and extroverted, Red is action and assertiveness.

If you know me the colors match pretty well. The graph on the left is me when I’m “trying.” This is how I wish to be seen as others. Notice anything? Basically I’m just more me.

This is what social media should do for you. It should amplify who you are. But its not a 1:1 ratio. I don’t crank up my energy in social media because I’d overwhelm people. I turn up my green a lot to make sure I’m being conscious of others (I still struggle with this). I don’t even try and be much more organized but I do turn up my red. The red helps me achieve my goals. It’s my drive. But I don’t hide anything and the rankings don’t change, just the percentages.

A lot of people tell me they don’t want to be a Chris Brogan or Robert Scoble. That’s a really good thing. I know Chris and Robert and we don’t need more than one of them.

Each one of us is unique and has value to add. Don’t try and be anyone else, just Be More You. You may need to turn up your yellow so you have enough energy. You may need to turn up your red so you have the courage to put yourself out there. I don’t know, I’m not you, you are.

The number one reason people don’t use social media is fear. The most primitive part of our brain tries to stop us from doing anything that will cause us to not be accepted by our tribe. We are literally hard wired to fit in. Writing a blog that could be read by millions of people scrutinized and criticized is scary. No matter who you are (unless you’re a sociopath) has to deal with this fear.

When I hear excuses like “I don’t have time,” “I don’t have anything to say” I hear “I’m too scared” and “I don’t think it’s important.” If you don’t think its important I refer you back to my first three questions. If you’re scared, that’s fine, that’s normal. If you weren’t scared a little then that would be scary.

At some point Being More You requires not caring what other people think. At least not enough to stop you from doing what you need to do. That’s what makes you, You and not Them.

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New Comm Biz

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Last Saturday marked the 3 year anniversary of New Comm Biz. You’ve put up with my incoherent rantings, my random juxtapositions, horrible grammar and atrocious spelling. Through all of it, I’m afraid, I’ve learned more from you than you have from me but hopefully it hasn’t been all one way.

I thought I’d share some of my stats and my all time Top Ten posts.

• 3 years
• 650 blog posts
• 2,011 comments
• ~10,000 unique visits a month
• ~2,000 RSS subscribers
• Currently #108 on the AdAge Power 150
• 93 fans on Facebook
• 105 followers on Twitter

My Top Ten post over the last 3 years:

Wikipedia is the best thing ever!

“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world, can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” – Michael Scott

This is Why Google Scares the Sh*t Out of Companies

Google scares companies. But Google is also starting to scare people. It was bad enough when the only real data they had on you was your publicly available data and your search history.

There is NOT too much information

Most people I know complain that there is too much information *out there*. The amount of information isn’t going to get smaller and sadly the tools to manage that information are not able to keep up with the pace that we are able to create it. So what are people going to do? For one they will become obsolete and be replaced by digital natives (have you ever heard a Gen Yer complain about too much information?). The rest will adapt.

My GTD Moleskine Hacks

Why do I insist on keeping a notebook? To quote Dwight Schrute, “I keep secrets from my computer.”

Business Lessons From a Dead Viking

For all the hype about the Internet moving so incredibly quickly and destroying business models, the businesses that it’s affecting the most are the oldest and slowest business models: the ones that have had a long time to change and have chosen not to adjust early on.

Forget, Unfriend. The new put down is the Un-Retweet.

I was a huge skeptic of Twitter rolling out their retweet functionality, but I’m starting to warm up to it. I don’t see manual RT’s going away, especially until it’s integrated into the major Twitter clients. There will always be the need/desire to append a tweet with your own commentary. But given the cool things retweets will let us do (like ranking tweets) I can definitely see this catching on.

Posterous Overtakes FriendFeed, Set to Overtake Delicious.

One of the biggest drivers of technology adoption is the group known as curators or collectors. This is the noise 10% on Twitter sharing all those links. It’s also the group that flocked to FriendFeed. It’s that same profile that made Delicious the early New Media breakout service 5 years ago.

Leaving HP. Back to Agency Life.

I’m extremely excited for the opportunity to take everything I’ve learned over the last 5 years, to expand on that and to continue to grow. I believe that this recession is the perfect opportunity for agencies and companies to “double down” on social media.

Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years in Business Social Media

If you work in social media the money will flow again in 2010.
Scale should be your #1 priority. This means process and workflow.
If you have a lot of experience doing (not just talking about) social media, 2010 is your year.
If you’re not well positioned with social media experience, get there now.

On Being an Influencer and Marketing as Media

Companies exist to solve market needs. Why should our marketing be any different? Marketing itself is now media. If we want it to survive in this field of noise out there we have to create just as compelling content as the media we used to rely on. The tables have turned. Which side do you want to be on?

I’m always open to feedback. The comments are yours. What would you like to see more of or less of.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

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As blogs and media networks extend their reach using Facebook Pages, I noticed something interesting:

Facebook can be used as an RSS reader.

Most people don’t use the groups feature enough but it’s just like using Twitter lists, except you can’t share them. I’ve set up one just for the blogs I follow on Facebook.

It’s like a more graphical version of Google Reader with the shared and comments view shown in the collapsed mode.From here users can like or comment on any post or click through to the expanded “notes” view.

Facebook is a growing source of news for most people. While the geeks among us may still prefer RSS or Twitter your average user will follow a fan page before they subscribe to an RSS feed.  I’ve written about a study showing that Facebook members use the social network as a growing source of tech news.

(BTW, feel free to join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page.)

Over on the Facebook blog, Malorie Lucich, has a post about how she’s seeing the rise of Facebook as a news source Creating Your Personalized News Channel.

When the earthquake hit Haiti, victims in the area, news affiliates and people around the world used Facebook to learn what was happening, connect with loved ones and quickly disseminate information. ABCNews.com and France 24 added Facebook live stream boxes to their sites to enable people to share their feelings on the disaster and relief efforts, and publish it back to their Facebook status. Meanwhile, The New York Times created a special Facebook Page dedicated to Haiti coverage, resources and updates from their reporters on the ground.

Malorie then recommends building a group of just the news sources you follow to clear the clutter. The next step in Facebook’s twitterfication will be to make these lists shareable. Facebook could also further this adoption by mimicking Twitter’s now dead, Suggested User List and have a recommended group that people could follow or even recommended groups by category. Companies would pay millions for that kind of reach.

As this kind of use on Facebook grows your Facebook fan numbers could easily eclipse your RSS subscriber numbers. This also poses an interesting challenge for publishers hiding their content behind pay wall or a unique partnership opportunity, depending on how they approach it.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick just posted a very similar post on ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook Could Become World’s Leading News Reader (Sorry Google)

Services like MyYahoo and iGoogle saw some traction and many readers here may have a Google Reader account, but dedicated RSS (really simple syndication) feed reading services have never lived up to their potential to become a mainstream phenomenon. These days many people say they just wait until links get shared on Twitter and they never use a feed reader at all. Late last week Facebook threw its hat in the ring and called on users to use its service as a news feed reader. There are a number of reasons why Facebook could be the strongest online subscription option yet.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

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I firmly believe that the answer to the question depends on the CEO. There are a lot of brilliant CEO’s who just don’t have the personality to blog.

I have repeatedly stated that social media does not make you a better person. It just makes you more you. It amplifies whatever it is that you are. If you’re a jerk in real life, you’ll be a jerk online. If you’re super smart, but boring, a blog won’t make you super interesting. Just smart with no one reading your blog.

I have worked for and with some amazing CEO’s of publicly traded companies but not all of them would author a compelling blog.

I do NOT believe a CEO blog should be ghost written. If they don’t have the time or inclination to blog then they shouldn’t have a blog. Period.

But there is another potential problem with CEO’s blogging. Jeffrey M. Stibel has a post over at HBR about leaders speaking their mind that hits on the issue.

Should a CEO Speak His Mind? – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review

Our leaders have grown far too powerful and exercise that influence with more freedom than ever. This means that a leader’s thoughts, opinions, misgivings, and mishaps are all critically important for us to truly understand how they will influence their day jobs. Whether it is alcoholism, a hatred of Microsoft, objectivist philosophy, a cigar in the oval office, or someone who believes the Internet is a brain and knowledge is just a bit overrated, they inevitably influence a leader’s day job. We cannot uncouple the leader from the individual.

Companies move too fast. Very few people inside a large company have a clear road map of the strategy, let alone anyone outside of a company. Because of that shareholders, press and analysts put a lot of stock in the abilities and vision of the CEO.

If a CEO were to speak their mind, especially when they may be uncertain about something that could cause people to loose faith in the CEO and therefore the company.

Jeff goes on to propose an alternative solution to our current CEO focused leadership style:

There is an alternative solution but, in Dr. Suess’ words, it is a “wonderful, awful idea.” Wonderful in that it is simple, elegant, and accurate. Terrible in that it is practically impossible until we rid our society of the obsession with idols and icons. The idea — and this has my vote — is to reevaluate our focus on individual leadership and focus on the value of teams and teamwork.

While it may be awhile before we get to this point, I think that other executives blogging is a great way to build confidence in a companies “bench talent.”

If you’re CEO isn’t right for blogging there are probably several CXO’s and SVP’s that could carry the torch.

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Full Disclosure

If you publish content (whatever that may be) about the industry you work in, I think you have an ethical obligation to disclose any potential conflicts.

It is not practical to disclose conflicts of interest in every tweet, blog post, location check in and Facebook status update. You’re going to miss something sometime. So I highly recommend that you build a disclosures page.

With the FTC rules  yet to be clarified it’s better to be safe that sorry. The FTC guidelines will require case law to determine what they actually mean and trust me you don’t want to be the case.

This is a really simple fix:

1. Create one about page for all your disclosures. It doesn’t have to just be disclosures, it can be one all inclusive “about” page.
2. Link to that page from all of your accounts.

Because I have so many places I publish to I wrote a post on my Posterous site www.tacanderson.com/tac-anderson. On this page I link to all my blogs, my employer and a separate more detailed disclosures page. I now link to this page from all of my profile pages (I’m sure there are a few I’ve missed but as I find them I’ll change them).

This is something that most reporters, especially in the business sector, do.  Kara Swisher has an Ethics Statement on her WSJ blog

Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

From there she links to a page which lists EVERYTHING. She was right that it lists more than you want to know.

What if you don’t have a blog? You could use LinkedIn this way. You could also use a Google Profile page or even a single post to a blog site like Posterous Tumblr or WordPress.

Am I just being paranoid? How are you handling this? Do you have your disclosures posted somewhere? Leave me a link, I’d love to see your approach.

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