Blog Posts About: Weblogs and Business

I have to give a shout-out to John Edwards, presidential candidate from North Carolina. He just started a blog that he appears to be authoring personally. Being from North Carolina myself, I'm glad to see Edwards using the web well.

Via: John Robb

studio id | Blogging in Corporate America

Michael Angeles recently presented a presentation to the Usability Professionals Assn. regarding Lucent's use of Intranet-based Weblogs.

His presentation is available for download and I think it contains very useful and insightful points about the use of Weblogs on corporate Intranets.

Abstract:
Lucent Technologies' Information Specialist, Michael Angeles, believes blogging has evolved beyond "cool" and is moving quickly into the corporate world. In this presentation, Angeles will discuss who blogs, how and why.
He will also discuss how Lucent is supporting bloggers and at the same time keeping close watch over the resulting growth of information on the Intranet. Lucent's objective is to determine how the increased content that will result from blogging can evolve into a plan for making that information useful and usable for the enterprise."

Reminds me a little of my post about how I would implement weblogs in business.

Via: Roland Tanglao

Making Blogs More Than Just What's for Dinner (TechNews.com)

Quote from Gayley Knight regarding the value of Weblogs on corporate websites. I totally agree.

"I think you could find that your customers start returning. Business Web sites do not function the way they were envisioned during the dot-com gold rush. I think they'll return to the blogs, because if you make it useful . . . you're going to be able to not only manage content, but help people."

The article also discusses the loss of control that corporations fear in getting started with Weblogs. I think the single biggest impediment to weblogs on corporate websites is their reliance on traditional marketing, which has been their winning strategy for many years.

These strategies don't change easily. MarCom is a bedrock of many companies even as customers are increasingly ignoring the MarCom language. However, some of the forward thinking companies are starting to see the opportunity of Weblogs and it won't be long until it's more mainstream. I hope.

Via: Ross Mayfield

John Robb points to a good example of how weblogs can can work for and against corporations in the context of Google searches. He goes on to talk about the monetary value of positive reviews in Weblogs and asks why PR people aren't all over webloggers to do reviews so that they can ensure that positive reviews come up on Google. I liked his conclusion:

I guess they are too busy sending out press releases that nobody reads.

I, for one, would not want to be approached by a PR person that is wanting to influence my writing and I don't want to see this come to fruition. Weblogs can work for businesses, but I think they need to work for them by building trust in their community of webloggers, inside and outside the company. I have a feeling that PR works counter to this idea by seeking to seed the discussion in the company's favor- doing away with the objectivity that can be so important.

Last night my friend Anthony and I were reminiscing about Napster. That system allowed something that I think led to its incredible growth (aside from the free music). Napster allowed me to view another person’s music collection online.

If I found someone sharing a song I liked, I could check out their shared music collection- and many times I found that our tastes were remarkably similar. In which case, I’d download a bunch of songs from them and feel great about my new additions- I'd found a gold mine of my favorites because we have similar tastes.

In my mind, the same availability of personal tastes is contributing to the growth of Weblogs. Just as Napster allowed me to find music I liked by going to a single person’s collection, Weblogs allow me to find all sorts of interesting information by going to a person’s weblog. If someone’s weblog appeals to me, the chances are that I’ll find their future posts and other parts of their site to appealing as well.

All this comes down to something that I’ve called the filtering effect of Weblogs. By this, I mean that webloggers with which I have things in common help me filter through all the available information and find the things that appeal to my tastes- because personal tastes are great filters.

I think this is one of the beauties of Weblogs - allowing like-minded people to use each others weblogs to filter through and focus on the subjects that interest them most.

Further, in terms of business Weblogs, businesses should think about their niche and how they are filtering information for their customers. By being a good filter for the niche, they can become a valuable part of their customer's learning and awareness.

LLRX.com - The Internet Roundtable #37: Are Blogs Right For Law Firm Marketing?

Via: Up2Speed

This is a transcript of a discussion about how weblogs work, why RSS is cool and how lawyers could use them.

They spend a lot of time discussing RSS and news aggregators- particularly how they may hold the key to resolving the problems with email.

Here’s a description of my Internet world before news aggregators. I couldn’t find anything with search engines because of all the pay for placement plans. I’d never remember to check web pages I was interested in because my bookmarks were so difficult to use. My email box was being bombarded with spam and dealing with email newsletters was wearying me. Sound familiar? Now I’ve moved much of the delivery of web information to me over to a news aggregator or newsreader. I see the information I want in one place and have reduced the number of newsletters I get via email, because I get the same newsletters as RSS headline feeds. The quality of my information experience has greatly improved.

I liked this quote too:

I look at all the difficult parts of running a successful web site that blogs, almost by their nature, solve and it amazes me. Fresh, changing content; better search engine placement; publicity that makes it easy for people to return to your site; great design because of the standard templates; and ease of maintenance. All the things that we’ve been preaching over the years get handled nearly automatically through the vehicle of a blog.