{A brief citation of articles related to business blogging. Enjoy! -dc }
Business Blogging for Beginners – Fast Company
“Creating a business blog is a lot like hosting a cocktail party: You’re networking with customers in a low-pressure setting and, at best, nurturing great relationships.”
Blogs will change your business – Business Week.
“It’s time for a frank talk. And no, it can’t wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don’t even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there’s plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that’s sick in our society today, and it’s on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.
Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business — including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)”
The Bottom Line on Business Blogs – Entrepreneur
“So how do blogs fit into a business? They can be used in several different ways. Many companies use them for communication and collaboration among distributed colleagues, partners, suppliers, customers and others. That’s the most popular use. My personal favorite is that they also can be used as a unique, informal way to establish a company or individual’s reputation or brand. Other businesses use them to improve operations (like for project management or tech support knowledge-sharing), to demonstrate expertise (useful for professional services businesses) and to establish competitive differentiation. Blogs let companies reach out to value chain members with organizational news, marketing promotions, new product announcements and more. “
“Blogs can really give a company substantial business benefits:
· They’re cheap, easy to launch and don’t require HTML expertise.
· They make working in groups easier, are community-builders and can be more inclusive (and interesting!) than e-mail.
· They strengthen internal and external business relationships and improve productivity through interactive information exchange.
· They’re not intrusive, since users have to seek out a URL to read the content.
· They improve branding by presenting a more authentic and distinctive voice for a business than canned PR or MarCom messaging.
· They’re more searchable than e-mail and instant messaging, so they’re effective as an information or knowledge-base archive.”
How Blogs Pertain to You – iMedia
“Many businesses and publishers are still trying to figure out “blogs,” wondering if they should have a blog and what they should blog about. That’s probably a mistake. What they ought to be trying to understand is bloggers and blog readers.
It’s probably not wise to generalize about something as amorphous as the Blogosphere, but here goes: the Blogosphere is a place for people who want a more personal relationship with various entities they deal with on a regular basis — corporate, government, media, you name it. They want to have a sense of a person behind or within the enterprise. They are looking for something or somebody real.”
When a business shouldn’t blog – Business Blog Consulting
“Imagine two opticians. One says “I take care of eyes. There’s lots of medical info on eyes out there, so my Web site will be a digital brochure, and that’s good enough for me” while the other says “I get the same questions from every patient, and there’s so much confusing information online, I’m going to try and shed some light on eye care and eye health by writing about it. But not with a newsletter, how 90s!, but with a blog.”
Now, a slight aside: I believe that the future of business is findability, and if your business doesn’t appear when your potential customer looks for you online, you’ll eventually wither and die. Given that, you can guess which optician I think is going to be more successful in 24 months.”