Shout out to all colleagues and friends in NYC for the Writer’s Digest Conference including Jane Friedman and Christina Katz. I actually wish I could’ve been there and y’all know I rarely do conferences.

• Smart Money Answers for Writers: Fabulous tips!
• 30 Profiles of Resilience in Business: One pager of short, sweet and inspiring stories with links to detailed stories.
• Do You Know the Real Reason Not to Use Passive Voice? It ain’t cuz of awkwardness.
• Stephen Fry tweet sends book’s sales rocketing: He said he’d eat 40 hats.
• Surprise — Disrespecting Competitors Doesn’t Work! You shouldn’t disrespect people period. But you’ll go further if you play nice with competitors. Everyone’s product isn’t for everyone.
• 5 Cases When Social Media Isn’t Right for B2B: B2Bs are slow to adopt SM for a good reason. This explains why. It takes time for them to see how they can make the most out of SM.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• How to Tie a Cherry Stem with Your Tongue: I didn’t know my spouse could do this until recently.
• Embrace Left-Handedness with These 5 Great Sites: Me proud southpaw!
• 15 Coolest Nail Art Designs: Some freak me out while others are WOW.
• Yearbook Yourself, Scooby-Doo Yourself and Simpsonize Yourself: Had the most fun with Yearbook Yourself! [Link: Bitrebels]
• 20 Most Bizarre Craig’s List Adverts of All Time: Accurate list… although, I’m sure some are missing from the list.

Talented writer Thursday Bram presented me with a Proximidade Award, on the condition that I pay it forward to eight bloggers. According to the rules of the Award, I am to chose bloggers who are “exceedingly charming, blogging friends who aim to find and be friends” and include the following text in my post.

“I am grateful for an opportunity to award this to a few bloggers who are very special people. I include the following bloggers who may have received this award in the past but I’m sure won’t mind receiving it again.”

My eight choice are as follows:

1. Christina Katz, and her blog The Writer Mama
2. Karen Swim, and her blog Words for Hire
3. Brad Shorr, and his blog Word Sell
4. Joanna Young, and her blog Confident Writing
5. Tim Beyers, and his blog The Social Writer
6. Robert Hruzek, and his blog Middle Zone Musings
7. George Angus, and his blog (yes, I know he received it — but notice we can do it again!) Tumblemoose
8. You, and your blog [your awesome blog]

• 10 Guidelines for Social Media Participation at (Company) [pdf file]: Steal this policy to easily implement one in your company. No more excuses for not having a policy. A company that tries to control too much of social media will choke in its SM efforts. Also see how to create a winning corporate social media policy and Publicity Hound blog.
• The Power of Continuous Improvement: This applies to everyone including a small company and a one-person show.
• Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs: About time. It’s been tough to find b2b-specific blogs and contacts [Link: Valeria Maltoni].
• 10 Successful Facebook Business Pages: Like to see some that target businesses. All of these target consumers.
• Screenr: Easy to create screen casts!

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Wordoid: “Wordoids are made-up words. They look nice and feel great. They are good for naming things.”
• 10 Weirdest College Mascots: Aw, Fort Worth’s TCU is on there. I went there over 10 years for speech therapy and attended my freshman year in college there. The mascot costume is a little weird, but not the mascot itself. While growing up in Fort Worth, I’d see many horned frogs. Unfortunately, they’re scarce now. Nonetheless, the list shows stranger ones than froggies.
• 10 Coolest Pens: I love finding pens that write smooth without the squeakiness of a fine pen.
• Q-Block: Create 3D Pixel Art [Link: makeuseof]
• Printer Choreography: Who knew printers could dance? Warning: Lots of trees involved [Link: makeuseof].
• 12 Steampunk Gadgets and Designs: Ooh, cool looking PC.

• No Recession for Me links: “Stop freaking, start reading.”
• Benefits of Twitter for Writers: my tweetID is merylkevans.
• StateStats: Enter keyword(s) to get state stats.
• B2B Email Marketing interview
• Write or Die: Dr. Wicked’s Writing Lab – Super duper motivational writing tool. Scary stuff if you pick the hard core options. It erases your text if you take too long! [Link: Daphne Gray-Grant]
• Brands That Tweet: Companies and executives on twitter.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Letter to the Editor: The Biggest Loser – Indeed the casual games industry needs to get along and compromise.
• Man spends 26 years solving Rubik’s Cube: Loser or incredibly patient who didn’t give up?
• The Dial Up Kid: Reliving my modem days… even I could recognize these awful sounds.
• Far Side Reenactments: Comic strip turned real life. Hubby had this original one posted in his first job.
• Sleeping Chinese: My dad would’ve loved this. He could fall asleep anywhere.
• FAIL Blog: Nation fail and Extra Fresh Fail. Need all the laughs we can get! The grocer needs to watch abbreviations!
• New Alltop Topics: Art, Museums, Books, History, and Board Games

It’s no surprise that blogs are catching on with B2Bs (business-to-business). BtoBOnline confirms it by referencing a Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann survey.

“Blogs are the perfect forum for business and IT professionals — readers want to hear about a company or a product from ’someone like them,’” says Matt Lohman, director of market research, KnowledgeStorm. “And technology buyers seem to be more than happy to pass along relevant information from blogs — 70% of survey respondents recommend or pass along content from blogs at least once a month.”

Benefits of Business Blogging

No one can argue the benefits of business blogging especially when it helps with the following:

* Credibility and expertise: Thoughts do the talking.

* Becoming part of something big: Blogosphere and networking.

* Updating the site more often than if it had no blog.

* Easy way to gain word of mouth (mouse) considering 70% recommend or share content from a blog.

Tweaking the BtoB Blog

I’ve been installing blogs for PSJ (Professional Services Journal) and another BtoB web site. In working with the publisher, he asked me to change the terminology of coming blogging terms:

* Comment: “Post a comment or read other comments”

* Trackback: “Other sites referring to entry”

* Tags: “Related Topics”

* Removing permalink and other entry footer items from individual entry pages so the only thing that appears is comment.

These go against the standards us long-time bloggers have taken for granted. My publisher has a good point though. Blogs are new to BtoBs, but I told him that they may be new in the BtoB arena… there could be BtoB bloggers or readers who have been reading blogs for a long time.

Besides, I remember a few folks tried to rename RSS and got more complaints than support. So I wondered if the same thing would happen if we tried to change the names to something more understandable. Are the standards said and done? Or should BtoB blogs take a different approach?

In setting up these BtoB blogs, we’ve taken an approach to turn the blog into a web site slash blog rather than pure blog approach. PSJ’s blog matches the newsletter which it’s based on and adds a few bloggy components including subscribe, archives, categories, related topics (tags), and comments.

Are we off the mark and asking for trouble in modifying the verbiage? Or could we be taking a step toward change to things others have taken for granted?