Boston
chapter blog helps enhance B2B publishing
community
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Martha Spizziri’s ASBPE
Boston Blog offers New England
editors the latest B2B news. |
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Editor’s
Note: The weblog boom
is about specialized, niche interests.
Because the very substance of B2B
publishing is public, written expression,
one might think a large number
of blogs would be devoted to it.
Wrong. Only
a handful of people blog about
B2B media; this includes ASBPE’s
Boston/New England chapter blog
at asbpeboston.blogspot.com. Its
mission is to keep members informed
about ASBPE.
What follows
is a Q&A with Martha
Spizziri, who writes the ASBPE Boston
Blog. Stories on other bloggers will
appear in later issues. |
Why do you blog
about B2B publishing?
I started the blog as
a way to try to help provide a sense of
community for B2B editors in New England,
particularly the Boston area, which is
where our chapter members are concentrated.
Of course, I wanted to
write about ASBPE happenings, but
I also wanted to help keep people abreast
of other things going on that might interest
them, such as editorial training and local
media-related events. So the weblog was
started more to disseminate information
rather than to philosophize about the industry — although
I wanted to be able to do that occasionally,
too.
Vital
Stats
Blog
name: ASBPE
Boston Blog
Blogs
about: ASBPE national and local ( New
England) activities; anything that
might be of interest to business
editors in the area.
Address: asbpeboston.blogspot.com
Blog
author: Martha
Spizziri is ASBPE’s
Web site editor as well as the
vice president of the Boston/New
England chapter. She started in
the business press in 1984 at Cahners
Publishing (now Reed Business Information)
and has been involved with ASBPE
almost as long. She was with Reed/Cahners
until 2001. She has held the positions
of production editor, managing
editor, and Web editor, and now
is a freelance print and Web editor.
Blogging
since: June 2005
Traffic: No statistics
available.
Posting
frequency: Weekly, on average.
Hours
per week spent blogging: Averages about
an hour a week. |
What, if anything, do
you hope it will accomplish for the industry?
I hope that local editors
will feel more connected to a community
and less isolated in their cubicles. And
I’d like to make them more aware
of what ASBPE is doing for editors, of
course.
I thought a blog might
make that easier for several reasons:
- because it’s
frequently updated; because entries
(usually, but not always) are short and
sweet;
- because the nature
of a blog is that you don’t have
to navigate deep into the site to find
relevant new material;
- because RSS feeds make
it so easy to check for updates; and
- because, in many cases,
I could use the blog to link deep into
the national ASBPE Web site (asbpe.org)
so people could get more information
if they wanted it.
Has the response surprised
you?
It sounds contradictory,
but I was surprised both by the response
and the lack of response.
Very few people leave
comments on the blog — it’s
usually the same two people. That hasn’t
changed in the few months I’ve been
blogging. I don’t get e-mail, either.
I don’t
know if people aren’t reading the
blog, or are reading but just haven’t
felt the need to write back. I’m
sure part of the reason for the lack of
response is that I don’t blog daily.
Another factor might be that the posts
are generally factual, not commentary or
opinion.
Meanwhile, Folio: magazine
picked up on an item I posted about ASBPE
revamping its code of ethics, and they
contacted Roy Harris, our national president,
to do a news story about it. It really
surprised me, given the lack of response
generally, that Folio: picked up on that.
Do you have any handle
on how many people are reading your blog?
No. The free blogging
software I use (Blogger) doesn’t
automatically provide any traffic information.
I am researching third-party services to
track site visits.
Do
you blog?
If you blog about
B2B media or about the industry
your publication covers, we’d
like to know.
Send us your
name, job title, and the URL of
your blog to info@asbpe.org.
We’ll start a list of member
weblogs in the Links sections of
the our Web site.
|
Has the blog helped your
core business?
In this case, the “core
business” would be ASBPE, and I’d
have to say the results are mixed. We got
the mention in Folio:, but on
the other hand I’m not sure it’s
attracted more attention to the chapter.
What
advice can you give to bloggers?
A group blog could be
a good way to go. That way you share
the load and it’s not so hard
to keep the blog updated frequently.
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