It is a good time to be a blogger. Blog was Webster’s word of the year, bloggers were one of ABC News’ “People of the Year”, and Fortune Magazine has named blogging as the No. 1 business technology trend for 2005. But what do blogs really bring to business and what are early adapters doing? This is a question Amanda Watlington and I recently asked close to 70 well-known bloggers from firms like IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and SAP, as well as many small businesses and individual consultants in a variety of industries. Amanda is a search marketing expert and brings deep marketing and technical skills to complement my business experience.
We believe in the business value of blogs and wanted to create a practical guide for business bloggers. To supplement our own experience we reached out to learn from others and pass this experience on to our readers. We talked with about ten or more bloggers in each of five groups; small businesses, consultants, non-profit organizations, individuals in large organizations, and blog tool and service providers. The conversations have been fun and pushed our thinking. We look forward to sharing the insights and advice with others. The results are provided in our new book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide, soon to be available in online and paper editions.
We asked each blogger such questions as: when and why did you start blogging? How has it met your objectives? Have your objectives evolved? What have been the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? How do you benefit from other blogs? What are your favorites and why? What advice do you have for other bloggers?
There were several themes that emerged from their conversations. The first relates blogs to content creation and management. Until now content management tools operated at an enterprise level. But, there were no content management tools for the individual wishing to create content. The organization decided what content to include and in an attempt to serve all, frequently really served no one effectively. The best stuff was hidden on individual hard drives where even the individual could often not find it or remember its significance once they did. Each person had no really effective way to organize their content and add context in a searchable platform.
The simplicity of blogs with individual posts containing content and links in reverse chronological order, and in a searchable archive now gives us a tool for individual content management and a more effective tool for group communication than email lists or discussion forums. RSS feeds, where updates are automatically sent to subscribers, greatly extend this capability and usefulness within the enterprise for project management and other essential enterprise communication.
The second theme relates to enhancing networks and building communities that drive business in today’s interconnected markets. Not only do we have a platform for individual content management but it is open to everyone, and they can add comments. Many bloggers started their blog for individual content publishing and discovered that others were reading and commenting on their work and thus conversations opened up. Business communities emerged and new collaboration became possible. We found many examples of both themes in our diverse set of bloggers.
In addition to the detailed individual case studies derived from each interview, we provide practical guidance to everything you need to decide if you want to become a blog reader and/or a blog writer to support your business, and then offer the insights on how to be successful in your efforts. Topics address all the business, technical, writing, and publishing issues you will face as a business blogger with advice from the experts. How do get started? How do you get noticed? How do sustain and build your readership? How do you benefit from other blogs?
As Jim McGee, one of our interviewees said wisely, blogs lower the barrier to both individual content management and to virtual conversation within enterprises and on a global level. Whenever you lower barriers, new phenomena emerge. Business practices will change and business users will expand our understanding of what blogs can do, as I wrote on Monday. There will be winners and losers. We designed this book to help you understand the opportunities in this new form of communication and enable you to benefit from its potential. I will be back with an announcement of its availability soon.
I totally agree with your post regarding business and bloggers. I believe that now with the many schools taking on blogging as another viable form of enhancing education, the transition from higer ed. to work will be smoother if businesses get on the blogging board.
Posted by: amy bowllan | February 03, 2005 at 09:09 AM