Dear Readers, today Jane is starting a new interview series. We call it Smart Blogger. Over the last year we have met some superior communicators, both men and women. We often bring their words to you through our usual Thursday Smart Man or Smart Woman Online series. But, we are finding so many of the people we meet are bloggers, and MSM (main stream media) is paying so much attention to blogging, that another series of interviews-- the Smart Blogger series-- was born. It does not, will not, replace the Smart Man Online or Smart Woman Online interviews, but will pre-empt them once in awhile.

How does this help you market to women online? Read on and you will see...

To launch our newest informative bloggersation, we offer you the educated thoughts of Neville Hobson, a truly remarkable communicator, and someone whose blog, NevOn, never fails to teach Jane remarkable things.

Jane: We would like to explain the term Smart Blogger in more detail, Neville. To Lip-sticking, a Smart Blogger is one who blogs on a regular basis and is comfortable with their voice online. We have been reading your blog, NevOn, for awhile now and you more than qualify as a Smart Blogger--just look at your post on CNET and their lame FAQs about blogging.

Our first question, then, is this: why blog? It's a question that's being asked, in one way or another, across the net-- and the answers vary so widely, they leave Jane cross-eyed. From your perspective, tell us why someone--anyone, not just a business professional--might write a blog.

Neville: Thanks, Jane, and thank you for having me on your blog! A conversation with a lot of women around the world. Wow! (Winning Over Women...wow, indeed!)

I think there are two answers to your question – the first is to do with personal blogging; the second with business blogging.

On a personal level, someone might write a blog because it provides them with an outlet, a channel, to express themselves in a way that’s different to the usual kind of self-expression.

By this, I mean talking about something that interests you and that you’d like to tell other people about. Usually, you’d talk to your friends and family. You’d develop conversations among people you know. A blog gives you the means to tell a much bigger audience about something that interests you. Now, whether they are interested as well is a different matter. They might tell you what they think of what you write. The point, though, is that you have the power to tell your story in a way that enables you to reach more people to develop interesting conversations.

However, reaching more people to develop conversations with them is not necessarily a primary motive for blogging. For instance, I have friends who write personal blogs who do that purely for the self-expression reason and who really don’t care if anyone reads what they write. The blog is purely an outlet for their self expression. That’s absolutely fine, if they’re happy with that. There’s no rulebook here. It’s their blog and they can do what they like with it!

Business blogging, on the other hand, is all about making connections, and developing conversations and relationships with people in new ways.

If you start a business-related blog, the self-expression reason isn’t why you’d do it. You’d do it for strong business reasons that are related to the reasons why your business conducts any kind of organized communication. What you’re seeking is to further your connections with your customers, partners, employees, investors, etc, in a way that lets them participate in your conversation.

A business blog complements your other communication channels and enables people to get to know you in a way that’s informal in comparison to your other communication channels. And that’s conducive to developing closer relationships. That’s putting it very simply, of course, but it is all about developing conversations and relationships.

Jane: We notice that you write on a variety of topics; business, politics, marketing, technology-- you are obviously well-read and well-connected. Do you think being well-read and well-connected are necessary qualities to 'smart' blogging? For our readers' sake, we will refer them to your post of Feb 18th, "The Shift in Balance and Power" where you write, "By their very nature, blogs are open and and provide a framework for communication transparency, don't they? They're vehicles which we can employ to develop dynamic communication and stimulate conversations with and between people, aren't they? And, they're channels via which we will see massive social change, won't we?"

All of which involves a measure of knowledge about the topic...in contrast to..those bloggers who just blog along for the fun of it. (we will bring this question around to a conclusion later on in the interview)

Neville: Yes, I do think that you need to have a pretty keen awareness of what’s going on around you.

From a smart blogging perspective, being well-read and well-connected are among the key things that define what smart blogging means.

More than anything, though, you should have passion about what you talk about in your blog, whether it’s a business topic or a personal one. Your passion will then be reflected in what you write about and how you write it. That makes other people think your blog is interesting and will help them think it’s worthwhile to come and visit you. And hopefully, join in your conversation.

Again, it’s about conversations and relationships.

Jane: Recently, Yvonne, aka Jane, was fortunate enough to meet you in person at a conference in San Francisco (but, she forgot to get your autograph, darn!). We're impressed that you flew in all the way from Amsterdam. How was the conference, from your point of view? What kind of people attended? What, in your opinion, were they looking for? How would you rate the overall effectiveness of the conference...as a place to actually learn about blogging, as opposed to being a place smart bloggers came together to share experiences?

Neville: It was great to meet you, too!

The conference was simply phenomenal. All those people gathered together to find out about blogging and other tools. It was the first event that addressed new communication channels like blogs and RSS from a communication perspective – PR, marketing, employee communication, etc. It was not a tech event by any means.

So if you didn’t know anything about how blogs work, how the underlying tech platforms work – and didn’t have much interest in such things – but, instead, you wanted to know how to make blogs work for your business, this was the event to be at.

There were nearly 100 people there, most of whom were communicators, who wanted to find out how to get started with corporate blogging. How a company could use a blog as part of crisis communication planning. How PR people should pitch bloggers. Or how blogs can help you really engage your employees. There were panel discussions, really thought-provoking conversations on blogging and branding and blogging and journalism, with some top-notch speakers.

One of the great things about being part of that conference was just seeing light bulbs lighting up in people’s eyes as the event progressed over the two days. Everyone I spoke to said they had learned something new by attending.

Of course, it was also simply great to meet other business bloggers, smart people all of them. Putting faces to names you already know but had never actually met. That was the icing on the cake.

The learning opportunity is still there as the conference is being repeated in Paris in early April. If you’ll be there, Jane, we can exchange autographs then! (alas, we will be in Chicago with LexThink! But, we will think of you, Neville.)

Jane: Are you into reading blogging books? Everyone seems to be writing one (even Jane...more on that at Lip-sticking soon!). Have you read Hugh Hewitt's book, BLOG? We did a review of the book, both on Blogcritics and on our blog...and, while we learned some useful and valuable things from it-- we were a bit put off by Hugh's lengthy discussions on the politics of blogging-- i.e. his repeated references to how poliblogs drive information. If YOU were to write a blogging book, what would you call it, and...what would your message be?

Neville: Funnily enough, I’m currently reading Hugh Hewitt’s book. Before I got it, I’d never heard of Hugh Hewitt (I’m not American and I live in Europe).

He certainly is pumping a political agenda! But, what I find interesting about the book is that it’s not too difficult to put aside the political messaging and focus on the valuable substance of what the book’s about. And there is much of value in this book. It’s not a ‘how-to’ book by any means. Instead, what it gives you is history and perspective – from this book, you can gain some clear understanding of why blogs are such an irresistible force today and why organizations ignore them at their peril. (we must agree-- that aspect of the book impressed us, also.)

As for writing a blogging book, I wouldn’t at the moment! There are a good half-dozen books on blogging in preparation already, so there’s quite a bit of saturation.

One such blogging book that I’m paying close attention to as it develops is Blog or Die by Robert Scoble, the Microsoft ‘geek blogger,’ and Shel Israel, the writer and business counselor. It’s a unique approach to book publishing, one that may well change how books are published in the future, as the content of the book is being developed to take into account the ideas, suggestions and other inputs from business bloggers via The Red Couch, the book project’s blog.

And ongoing dialogue – conversations – with those bloggers continues on the blog as the project develops. Expect to see the end result in the bookstores next January.