http://betweenseeing.typepad.com/between_seeing/

Thanks for reading…and for commenting!

For grins I went to http://www.artofdisplay.com and checked out your company. Nice site, good products, great client list.

Here’s a thought…even though I don’t necessarily go for his approach…the concept is still sound: the CEO blogger.

One of the ones I enjoy most is Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy: http://www.bobparsons.com/

This guy came out of nowhere and I’ve heard him speak. He’s an ex-Marine with a drill sergeant demeanor and talked about being “counted out” by the smart people since he didn’t come from an internet-centric background and was fairly clueless. He’s put GoDaddy on the map and is an absolutely rabid blogger. In my view, his offbeat demeanor comes through in his blog and he gets to interact, engage and talk with his customers via the blog.

The Art of Display web site is good and you point our your values: Communication is Key; It’s About Life Not Work; It’s About Making Good Choices; Our Clients Partner With Us; and so on.

Where is the human being talking about these and your other values? Telling your clients stories about how you or your people did something that embodied them? I submit that you could blog and do so right on the site itself (though in Flash you might have issues…but I digress).

Another benefit would be to empower your team — especially those that interact directly with clients — to have their own value in their own blog so they could talk directly to clients. I’ve even seen CSR’s (customer service reps) within companies that have had a series of blogs for all clients that both management and the CSR themselves could instantly post to as well as have links to important information…all while the CSR is able to personalize a post for a specific client.

Where could you talk about what’s happening in the virtual trade show space and what it means for your business? This is already moving forward within, for example, Second Life and I’ll bet your clients are looking at better and cheaper venues and methods to sell to an interested clientele.

Does it take alot of time? Maybe. Depends on the value you decide to put in. I’ve had C-level executives simply use one key advantage to blogging platform software and that is sending an email to a “super secret” email address. The Subject line is the blog post title and the email body is the body of the post. Tough to stick images in using this method, but it’s really fast and easy (if you send email…just kidding!). These same C-level exec’s also sent their posts via Blackberry or Treo from the road.

My $.02…

I really appreciated your article on “Changing Nature of Work and Your Value Online”. I absolutely love the internet and the potential that it holds. I have looked at blogging on and off over the last few years wondering how I could make use of the technology, how it might help build my business and more importantly, how I could learn and grow through my interaction with other like minded people.

My concern is that I already spend enough time on the keyboard and maintaining a blog appears to be a great deal of work. This is something that I will have to weigh.

But you captured my attention when you summarized and said it this way, “So carve out your niche aligned with your passions, value and purpose; get a blog get a feel for how to do it authentically.” Maybe I would rather create a personal blog rather than a business based blog. Something to think about.

Thank you.

Bob