Is It All About Business Exchange?

The following article is excerpted from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media But Were Afraid to Ask by Hillary J.M. Topper



BusinessWeek Exchange is one of the most inventive, creative ideas to come along in a long time. It takes the idea of user in user-generated content and does something really interesting with it. It brings companies into the fold as users – presenting a unique and potentially controversial way of looking at contributed content. I believe we won’t see the full impact of what BusinessWeek Exchange - and others to come - will have for at least the next year and probably the next 2 to 3 years. I factor blog networks from Fast Company, Wired and the like into this, too.

They’re allowing CEOs (and other, usually C-level company people) to contribute to the dialogue as though they’re reporters under the guise of a blog. Again, authority and influence changes with the title of the person writing. That is, when and if the user - meaning reader - realizes it, which they inevitably will.

-- Jennifer Lindsay,
Director of Digital Services and Social Media Evangelist

BusinessWeek magazine has the right approach. Since they know the value of social networking, they created Business Exchange where business people can connect with one another. Interestingly, when logging into Business Exchange, visitors can also view the top news stories on BusinessWeek, the magazine. You can save news stories to your home page along with interesting relevant news articles. This makes the site quite useful and helps BusinessWeek build a loyal following.

Business Exchange is arranged by topics. Topics are sorted by functional areas such as Business Law, Small Business Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. There are also more specific or timely areas such as the fall of Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve bailout of Bear Stearns and even the latest business strategies of Starbucks.

Business Exchange lets you bookmark business news, blog articles, tools and additional online resources to share with others. You can bookmark just about any format of online content including videos, tools and white papers. Readers can also comment on news items submitted.

Upon registering Business Exchange you set up a profile. Those who belong to the social networking site, LinkedIn, can import their LinkedIn profile sparing duplicate efforts of filling out yet another profile.

My 2 Cents via the author

I like that this site suggests people that I may want to include in my network. Through this feature, I actually met a business owner in India, with whom I regularly correspond. My connections are networked to people who post interesting articles attached to their sites.

Business Exchange also has links to Twitter, which is very helpful, especially when I seek to connect with reporters or business development people to grow my business.

I like that the site offers news feeds to interesting articles and blog sites that prompt lively conversations. You can also post an article or a blog entry as well. There are only business people on this site and it is relatively easy to network with people who you may not otherwise meet.

The only problem I see with the site is that it doesn’t have many active participants. It would benefit the site to promote to business owners on Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and Twitter.

John's Comments:

Business Exchange is a great place to connect with other business leaders. My guess is that this site will become more active as business people discover it AND BusinessWeek promotes it.

Blogging Interviews

To promote Personality Not Included, Rohit Bhargava invited fellow bloggers to send him five questions about the book. As part of the offer, he promised that the best interview would win a signed copy of the book and a $100 gift certificate from Amazon. 55 bloggers took him up on his offer.

One blogger, for example, asked for Bhargava's elevator pitch. His response: "Faceless companies don't work anymore. In the social media era, personality matters."

Another asked him if he considered himself a Simon, a Randy, or a Paula (the American Idol judges). He responded, "Definitely Simon, because he's authentic. Authenticity to me means not blowing smoke up people's behind when you think they are stupid."

Still another asked him if the weird little wind-up chickens on the book cover had any significance. Nope. They were simply used to help the book stand out in the business section of bookstores. As Bhargava noted, "Have you seen chickens on any other marketing books?"

In his summary of this effort (http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/ weblog/2008/04/pni-virtual-int.html), Bhargava hinted that next time he did something like this, he'd probably make it easier for the bloggers (and him) by having them ask only 3 questions.

Now, the one thing he did not report was the effect on sales. Yes, he got featured in 55 blogs. Neat. But did he sell any books? I just checked his Amazon rank (17,329 as I write this blog post). For a comparison, here's the Amazon rank for 1001 Ways to Market Your Books (with no blog campaign going on recently): 6,599.



So, while some of the bloggers praised his book marketing campaign, he never reported the key stat: how many books did he sell. Alas.

Now, I liked what he did. You might try it yourself to promote your book. But if you do, please tell me how it affected your book sales. That's the key to marketing books. You must sell books.