Naked Conversations Book Review

I was really caught up reading Naked Conversations- Robert and Shel have written a very easy to read book in a totally conversational style that makes the reader feel they are sitting down and having a conversation with the authors. This definitely gives the book a “bloggy” feel to it and is no doubt intentional and very appropriate. The book flows very naturally and feels right to me, and is very well done in this regard.

Scoble and Israel very patiently instruct the readers about the risks and rewards, the do’s and the don’ts, the shoulds and the shouldn’ts of preparing a blog as the employee of a major company as well as a senior executive. They use constructive examples of people who have been fired by their companies for inappropriate blogging practices and how you can avoid a similar fate.

What was remarkable to me was that most of the book was written — and open for public feedback – on their Naked Conversations blog. And what great buzz they created for their work, simply by sharing the process of writing it publicly. Naked Conversations would have been a radically different book had they chosen to hole up somewhere and write it privately.

There are some great “How to” chapters worth reading in this book: among them Chapter 10 (Doing it Wrong), Chapter 11 (Doing it Right), Chapter 12 (How Not to get Dooced) and Chapter 13 (Blogging in a Crisis). Doing it Wrong and Doing it Right may have been the two most important chapters in the book I felt. Getting a true understanding of how to blog properly is covered very well. I especially liked their point on how if you “are going to blog, be authentic.” They consider this keeping your conversations naked while pointing out how other bloggers will easily call you out if you are not being true in the blogosphere.

I also enjoyed their “conversation” about how the blogosphere is constantly changing and so are the rules. This constant evolution brings excitement because no one is able or has the power to enforce the rules. We as bloggers are able to start any revolution we want, big or small. The 11 tips given in the Doing it Right chapter are great guidelines for rookie bloggers. It is easy to see how one of the blog gods, Chris Abraham, has such a disciplined approach to his Internet marketing schemes after reading this book. Those 11 tips are definitely worthy of writing down and putting next to your computer.

I would argue that you could probably skip the rest of the book, read those 4 chapters, than go back and pick and choose which chapters among the remaining interest you. In any case, it’s a good book. I would say it’s a perfect read if you are interested in blogging, contemplating creating an employee blog within your company or creating a company blog.