Need proof that blogs are going mainstream? Look no further than Cardinal Seán of Boston, who created a blog to chronicle his trip to Rome. He says that if the blog is a success, he will continue to use it after his return to stay in touch with his Archdiocese. In his words, takes from his sidebar:

“I want to share with you, Catholics of Boston, my experiences as I return to Rome as a Cardinal and more importantly, I want to share with you a sense of what it is that Boston’s Archbishop does on business in Rome representing the people of the Archdiocese.”
– Cardinal Seán

Smart guy. He’s already posted an extensive photographic tour from “behind the walls” of the Vatican, and even allowed a fellow Bostonian pastor to guest blog about living and working at the Vatican.

But the red-robed Cardinal isn’t the only blogger to start a new online journal and go straight to the “A-list.” Here in Canada, the role of the Governor General has come into question over the years, especially the cost and purpose of travel, etc. In the spirit of transparency and accountability (I presume) Our current GG Michaelle Jean has also created a new blog, as well as an online forum. Link via Kate Trgovac of MyNameisKate.ca, who shares her opinion on what works and what doesn’t about this idea.

Lastly, in a sure sign that blogging and RSS feeds are just one step away from being a household staple, I point you to an article entitled: How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way. Although I think that Stephanie, the author of the post, is using “Oprah” in her headline as a way of generating even more traffic, I have to agree that her explaination is suprisingly lucid and helpful to any newbies out there who still haven’t wrapped their heads around the idea of feeds. In particular, her illustration made a somewhat complex concept seem simple:

(Click image to view larger version)

If Oprah fans, Catholic Cardinals and political appointees are finding blogs and RSS useful, what’s stopping you?

I was asked to answer “1.5 Questions” on the One Degree site recently by Ken Schafer. The post went live today, so visit this link to read my answer to the question:

One Degree: “Jordan, can you tell us about your .sig file and what the pros and cons of your approach are?”

Also, CaseCamp last night was a success, by the accounts on the feedback page thus far. I presented the 30 Days project as a “case study in progress,” and although I couldn’t seem to stick to my notes, I think it went pretty well. John Ounpuu told me to pass along to my Dad that he should toughen up and ride the rest of the way without his ginch, to stay true to the title of the book, and Dane from Workspace said his dad rode the same route many years ago, and he’s always wanted to retrace the route himself one day.

Slides of all of the presentations should be made available on the wiki shortly. I’ll update.

Sorry for the lack of posting, but I’ve had rather bothersome connectivity issues in the past few days (seems like weeks now, in fact).  Let’s just say I’m not thrilled with my D-Link router, and leave it at that.

The news of the day is that I am presenting tonight at CaseCamp, a BarCamp-esque mini conference strictly for marketers.

I’m going to use the 30 Days With No Underwear site as an example of how blogs are better than press releases, and could ultimately deem the latter completely obsolete, in time.  I’m of the opinion that we still use press releases because we’re resistent to change, but I think that company blogging initiatives will replace the old methods eventually.

For now though, I still write press releases, too.  That’s what people expect, both clients and media. I could go on for days about why I think that should change, but I’ve got to build some slides for my presentation tonight, so I have to run.

What’s this all about you ask? Well, before you jump to conclusions, I must ruin the surprise by telling you that I don’t intend to go a month without the help of some ‘ginch.’

Instead, I use that headline to get your attention, to tell you about my latest side project. I’ve created a blog to chronicle my Dad’s current West Coast adventure from Powell River, BC, Canada, all the way south to Mexico, on his pedal bike with a handful of his friends. This is significant for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that my dad didn’t even own a bike until a few years ago, and he’s asthmatic. As for the title, you’ll have to click through to the site to read more.

So, here we have this cute blog about six middle-aged guys going on the adventure of a lifetime. But that’s not the whole story. I held back from writing this until I had a chance to get a feel for what the success rate of thing would be, especially since we plan to write a book about their adventures after they return.

(The six heroes of this story. My dad is third from the right)

Well, I can honestly say it has been a tremendous success thus far. This is the true meaning of blogging, I have discovered. We’re getting comments from people as far aways as Australia and France, and from such people as my Great Aunts and my Grandma! Needless to say, these folks had never been on a blog before this.

In fact, people from all over the small town of Powell River, BC are dropping in to comment. Dozens each day (although the photo page is just as popular for commenting as any given post is, for some reason). Wives and kids are leaving messages for their fathers, as a way of staying in touch. New photos are being emailed to me everyday and getting promptly uploaded to the Flickr account I set up. The guys are phoning in their updates and sending emails knowing they are becoming pseudo-celebs in the process. And for me, the whole thing has been a whole helluva lot of fun.

So if I could ask one thing, it would be to drop by the site and leave a comment for these unlikely heroes. They’d love to hear from you, and at this stage of the journey (over half way!) every little bit of encouragement helps. Also, when the books comes out, you can bet I’ll be flogging copies on here, and part of the proceeds will go to benefit the BC Lung Association, their charity of choice. Check out the site, read the about page and some of the posts I’ve written, but most of all, check out the comments that have been pouring in since a few days ago when I set it all up.

This is word of mouth in action, and I’m just thrilled.

Sean Moffit of Buzz Canuck and TheInfluencers.ca has generated a list called The Power 50: Canada’s 50 Brilliantly Crazy & Enlightened Marketing/Media Bloggers. And we’re on the list! This is a huge honour (Canadian spelling today, thank you very much), just as it was to be selected for the Top 20 Canadian Word of Mouth Blogs.

I am very flattered that Sean has chosen to put my blog among this list of Canadian Media bloggers, but I am also just glad that such a list exists. There are a lot of great blogs on the list, and I suggest you click through them and find a few new gems to subscribe to and add to your list of feeds. I know I will.

So here you are; the list of the Power 50, in no particular order:

The Crazy & Enlightened Marketing/Media Canuck Bloggers

• Amber Mac with Amber MacArthur
• Inside PR with Terry Fallis and David Jones
• Student PR with Chris Clarke
• Webwalker with Douglas Walker
• PR Girlz from the femme fatales at Thornley Fallis
• Participation Highway with Dave Carter
• Inside the CBC with Tod Maffin
• Niblettes
• H&K with Lisa Walker
• Networks (H&K) with Ted Graham
• Social Signal with Alexandra Samuel
• The New Pr with Ryan Anderson
• Flack Life with Bob LeDrew
• Green Hat with Julie Giles
• Trafcom news with Donna Papcosta
• Marc Snyder (en Francais)
• PR Measure with Howard Oliver
• Martin Hofman
• Flackadelic with Leona Hobbs
• Brendan Hodgson (H&K)
• Boyd Neil (H&K)
• Ad Hack with James Sherrett
• Chroma with Constantino Demopoulos
• Mutually Inclusive PR with Eric Eggertson
• Profectio with Dave Forde
• Canadian Marketing Association Blog ( A Collective)
• Sweet Mantra with Bill Sweetman
• Steve Hardy at Creative Generalist
• Michel Leblanc (en Francais)
• Experience The Message w/ Max Lenderman
• Blogging me Blogging You with Ed lee
• Horse, Pig, Cow with Tara Hunt
• This Blog Sits at the…with Grant McCracken
• Malcolm Galdwell
• Mark Evans
• Matthew Ingram
• Stuart Macdonald
• Buzz Marketing with Blogs with Susannah Gardner
• Tell Ten Friends with Jordan Behan
• Customer Experience Crossroads with Susan Abbott
• Darren Barefoot.com with Darren Barefoot
• 3i with Tamera Kremer
• ProPR with Joe Thornley
• One Degree with Ken Schafer and Company
• Podonomics with Leesa Barnes
• Home is Where You Hang Your @ with Michael Fergusson
• The Client Side with Michael Seaton
• Twist Image with Mitch Joel
• Canuckflack w/ Colin Mckay
• My Name is Kate with Kate Trgovac
• PR Works

If you’re reading this because you too are on the list, or found us from it, then I am delighted to meet you. Please leave a comment to say hello; I’m always looking for new friends to subscribe to and share comments with in this massive, constantly evolving cooperative marketing conversation of ours. I’m never shy to admit: I get a lot of my best ideas from my fellow marketing bloggers, some of whom are on the above list.
Cheers all, and thanks again for reading!

-Jordan.

If you have to read the Wikipedia entry for RSS to understand what it is, then this post could change your life. And I’m not joking.

Even RSS pros out there (especially Blackberry carrying types, like my wife) will appreciate the fancy new Web2.0 tool that I am about to introduce you to.

It’s called The Simply Headlines Experiment, and I found it via Steve Rubel.

Here’s the best way to describe it (in my words)…

It takes the latest entries from your chosen feeds, ie. http://feeds.feedburner.com/TellTenFriends (hint hint) and it turns them into news items in a cleverly designed newspaper format that you can receive in your email. You have the choice of text only, or html, as you see above. Also, it has a bunch of feeds already set up to choose from (CNN, Reuters, etc.).

So all you have to do is take the feed address from wherever you see this symbol: and paste it into the program. And voila! You’ll get your chosen items delivered daily in your email. Sound easy? Go here to sign up, and if you have any trouble, just ask me for help and I’d be happy to talk you through it. Before you know it, you’ll have a customized Google homepage riddled with dozens of feeds, or like me your Bloglines account will see action from upwards of 100 different sources (I know, I’m a bit of a junkie).

The time to make a significant jump in your understanding of technology is now. This tool has been created for you, to help you bridge the gap into one of the most exciting things to happen to media since the first television flickered to life. Perhaps that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but bear with me. The true extent of RSS’ influence on the way we receive news and connect with both each other and of course our customers won’t be seen for years to come. In time though, the bulk of internet users will get wise to the use of feeds, and they will be incredibly prevalent as part of our culture. What I mean by this is, not just my brother or my sister but indeed my Mother will, in her lifetime use RSS feeds as her main source of news. This may sound like a bold prediction, but you don’t know my Mom.

Cheers all, I hope you like it. And I said a few paragraphs ago, I’d be happy to help you get this set up, if you have troubles with it.

I made a clever little comic strip today at StripGenerator.com, about web content. This is a very fun little tool, but it lacks two very important things: The ability to save the image and the ability to embed said image into a page. So alas, I have no image of this clever little comic strip, but merely a link to it.

I also tried to make a screen shot of it in WebShotsPro, but that didn’t work. And thus continues my love/hate relationship with Flash.

I think I found the link (a few days ago) via Buzzshout. That’s one that all Web 2.0 fans should subscribe to.

You may have already noticed that my feed now comes with the latest photos that I have uploaded to my flickr account.

So, if you haven’t already subscribed to the feed then now’s the time, or you’ll never know what you’re missing!

I found a great post today via Steve Rubel, at a site called Apples to Oranges.

It lays out all of the best tools for tracking your online buzz. I’ve been asked about this quite a bit, so it’s nice to see a definitive list of tools that can give you a barometer of what’s being said about you online.

It’s a good list, and I was especially excited to discover socialmeter.com. It gives you a total of your website address’ incoming links, and displays it as an overall score. The score for my site is a measly 75, all of the “points” coming from Google and Technorati.

Have a look at the list, and pick your favorite. One thing the post doesn’t mention that I’d like to add is using Google News Alerts to track the mentions of you or your company in the more “traditional” news sources and static sites.

Try them out, and have fun!

Update: Kris dropped by in the comments and proceeded to give me link envy. So in an attempt to save face, I went back and checked the socialmeter score for my old blog. It’s score of 124 means that when you add them both together, I’ve still got a hot cup of jack squat…
So let’s make it a game, commenters: What’s your socialmeter score?

This is not a book review, nor is it streams of wisdom from the book whose title is featured in this headline, so if that’s what you came here for, my apologies.

I just wanted to announce that I’ve just bought the book (Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When they Ignore Marketing) today, and I was quite pleased to find that it came with an 80 minute video seminar on CD, and a $50 credit for Yahoo Search Marketing! I paid less than half of that in CDN funds for the book!

I have read and gleaned a truckload of wisdom from the Eisenberg’s previous two books, Persuasive Online Copywriting and Call to Action, so I think I can confidently say that the value in this package is incredible. It was certainly enough for me to rush home and want to tell ten friends.

Side Bar: According to our Feedburner stats, a record number of subscribers pulled our feed down yesterday, and without giving too much away, I think it’s safe to say I’m now telling an order of magnitude greater than just ten friends about this exciting book.

Quick tip: If you want to learn more about the Eisenberg’s methods, check out A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect, a blog written by staff of Future Now Inc, their company. If you want to put those methods into practice, either the Eisenbergs or of course myself would be happy to help.

I’m not the fastest reader of the printed word these days (too many feeds to stay current on, that’s my excuse) but once I’ve turned the last page of this beauty I will give it a thorough review here, and if its suitable, feature it my recommended reading links. New-media junkie that i am, I might just sit down with the laptop and watch that video seminar first…