The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil (Penguin Portfolio); available on Amazon

The Corporate Blogging Book is now available in Mandarin Chinese on amazon.cn and also, I am told, in bookstores in China. I haven't seen the Chinese edition yet and am looking forward to it.

I'm planning a book / blogging tour of Beijing and Shanghai in October. I'll kick off the China Blogging Tour with Des Walsh at ad-tech Beijing on Oct. 16, 2007. Edelman is sponsoring the tour. Lots more details to come.

P.S. Who will be reading the Chinese edition of The Corporate Blogging Book?

According to eMarketer's article, The Chinese Tiger Roars Online (open access for a few more days), China's Internet population of 136 million is second only to that of the U.S. With an anuual growth rate of 30 percent, it's expected to soon surpass the U.S.

Penguin Portfolio has sold the rights to mainland China publisher, Publishing House of Electronics Industry. The Mandarin Chinese edition comes out in 2007 (tentative date: May or June August or September 2007).

Download Chapter 1 in Chinese.

A big thanks to Raven Lu Li, who works for Accenture China, for translating Chapter 1 the book into Chinese. 

Now this is cool. The Corporate Blogging Book is TypePad's book of the month for October 2006. If you're one of the first 50 new customers who signs up for TypePad you'll get a copy of my new book.

Note that TypePad offers a free trial of their blog hosting service (and yes I highly recommend it).

Podcast interview

TypePad's VP and General Manager Michael Sippy interviewed me for a podcast. Listen here.

The Sept. 20th, 2006 teleconference for The Corporate Blogging Book was a lot of fun. There were nine participants, each of whom purchased five copies of my new book from 800-CEO-Read.

One caller, Cathy Chatfield-Taylor, was energetic enough to take really good notes. Inspired by her efforts, I added a few things (and corrected a few things). Then the 10 of us agreed to offer anyone who's interested the summary transcript as a PDF download.

Here are some of the questions we addressed. They were submitted by the participants, an interesting mix of consultants, corporate marketers and non-profit advocacy professionals.

Questions (see PDF for answers)

- What blog platform to use?

- How do you transition a blog from being a content management system to a more engaging interactive communications format?

- What do you do if you've published an ill-conceived post? How do you take it back??

- How do you handle comments? Moderate? Not allow?

- How do you build readership?

- How do you help non-writers blog?

- How can a non-profit raise money with a blog?

- What should an executive think / do / feel after finishing the book?

- What’s not in the book?

Download an edited PDF transcript of The Corporate Blogging Book Teleconference.

More pics of Washington’s blogging cognoscenti, as well as corporate blogger wannabes, who came to the pre-release party in downtown Washington DC - yes, one week before the official pub date of August 3rd!

John Aravosis of Americablog fame (at right) was there. A bunch of my friends from Fleishman-Hillard (co-hosts of the event) came, including Peter Klaus (at left).

And of course local celebrity corporate bloggers from the book, including Pat Cleary of NAM (at left), Kevin Holland of ACCABuzz and Cheryl Contee of BloggerRelations. Ken Yarmosh live blogged the event with this spot-on comment:

“There is an interesting crowd here but for the most part they do seem very non-bloggy. Despite the echoes we often hear in the halls of geek-dom, the blogosphere is not saturated yet. There are many, many more voices to come, blogging on everything from finance to real estate, to yes, even air conditioners. And I know, because I’ve met them this afternoon.” - Ken Yarmosh

Mitch Derman, a senior communications manager for AOL (at right), won the signed copy of my new book. And Olsson’s was on hand to sell books to the other attendees.

See more photos on Flickr. Oh and my inspired words to mark the pre-release launch of The Corporate Blogging Book in Washington DC?

“The city of spin meets the new age of corporate transparency: that’s what effective corporate blogging is all about!”

(I thought that was kinda clever.)

Technorati: the corporate blogging book , corporate blogging , fleishman-hillard, debbie weil

A bunch of cool people showed up at the 4th Estate Grille for a pre-release book launch. Here are a few photos. More TK.

Left to right, Cheryl Contee of IDI; John Aravosis of Americablog; Debbie Weil

Debbie and Dan Horowitz of Fleishman-Hillard, co-host of the event.

A few remarks to a, uh, spell-bound crowd. Blogger Pat Cleary of NAM (one of the corporate bloggers in the book) at left.

Stack of books displayed by Olsson’s booksellers.

Mystery man Sam [”Real people don’t blog” - from the introduction to the book]

Come rub shoulders with Washington’s blogging cognoscenti! Get a sneak peak of The Corporate Blogging Book… and purchase an advance copy! I’ll be on hand to sign yours. Cont.

Tuesday July 25, 2006
4:30 - 6:30 PM

4th Estate Grille
1101 17th St. NW
(17th and L Streets)
Washington DC 20036

RSVP by leaving a Comment (scroll all the way down after you click through)

As seen in Face Time in The Washington Post

The Washington Post Face Time: Tuesday, July 25, Corporate Blogging Demystified (page D5 in the Business section)

Guess what? NPR’s Diane Rehm, Marie Arana (Washington Post Book World editor) and Dan Raviv (CBS News Radio correspondent) all read their email. Every message.

Just don’t expect a response.

Unless you’ve touched a nerve and piqued their interest in… your book.

All three appeared on a panel that was part of this week’s Publishing University, a three-day learning extravanganza aimed at independent publishers and sponsored by the Publishers Marketing Association.

I gave a PMA workshop on Why Every Book Needs a Blog on Thursday.

PMA always holds its annual event in conjunction with the mega annual BEA (BookExpo America), held this year at the (mega) Washington Convention Center.

Re “starting book buzz,” the Post’s Marie Arana, Diane Rehm, and CBS News Radio’s Dan Raviv shared some excellent tips. Continue reading “Washington Post Book World, Diane Rehm, and CBS News Radio on creating “book buzz””

Boy, there’s nothing more fun than hangin’ with other book authors when you’ve finished writing… last time I saw Robert Scoble and Shel Israel (co-authors of Naked Conversations) was at the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco in August 2005.

Back then I was still more or less in a state of paralysis, having signed the book contract about six weeks earlier. I dived into the writing for real in late August and finished the manuscript for The Corporate Blogging Book on Jan. 2, 2006.

Here we are at the NewComm Forum in Palo Alto on March 2, 2006. Another version of this photo on Flickr.

Technorati: blogging books, naked conversations, the corporate blogging book, corporate blogging

Just got back from the terrific and stimulating NewComm Forum in Palo Alto, CA. Six blog book authors were there so I put together this slide for attendees of my panel on corporate blogging case studies featuring Jeremiah Owyang for Hitachi Data Systems and Paul Rosenfeld for Intuit’s QuickBooks online.

From top left, Publish & Prosper by D.L. Byron et al; The Corporate Blogging Book by yours truly; Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel; The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood; Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright and Blogging for Business by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopolous.

And here’s the Squidoo page on corporate blogging I created in lieu of a handout.