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Abuzz About Blogging

First things first: what's a blog? There are great debates about this. For a long time, blogs were considered non-commercial online diaries of an individual's thoughts, knowledge, commentaries and so on. These online diaries are often updated daily in reverse chronological order. I often think of blogs as informal, unedited streams of quasi-journalism from quasi-journalists.

Where blogs are now isn't much different than where web pages were in the early nineties. If in 1994 you wanted to find out how to artistically shave a poodle, there was probably a web site on the topic. However, if you simply wanted to find the phone number of your largest distributor, forget about it.

I know I might take some arrows from the purists for this comment, but blogging is going commercial. Here's why, in my opinion. Most corporate web sites are still annoyingly dull. Essentially, most are outdated repositories of unkempt content. To this day, most corporate web sites suffer from a combination of lack of content ownership, content management tools, and a compelling voice.


A blog can help change that.


Fortunately, there are a million tools out there to help you get a blog up and running. (We've got one of them.) A blog is, by its very nature, unscripted content. It's conversational. So corporations may now have an area of its web site where strict communications controls are lifted to a degree, and knowledgeable people with organizations can express their opinions, know-how, and commentary in a more free-flowing and, truthfully, more entertaining way. When considering whether to publish a blog, ask yourself not "what do I have to say" but "what do I have to share."

What are some ways in which corporations could use a blog? I brainstormed a few. Here are three scenarios:

  • Honda has recently launched a not-ready-for-the-car-lot fuel cell car. There's a lot of interest in this field. Honda could have its chief engineers host a blog on the future of fuel cell technology. How's it working? What are the challenges and opportunities? What can we as possible consumers expect?
  • A heart disease research foundation is attempting to gain greater attention for itself and its scientists. If those scientists could host a blog where sufferers from heart disease could read their research findings, health reports and health improvement tips, perhaps the blog could go a long way in savings lives.
  • A consumer electronics company is launching a new MP3 player that hooks into your car stereo system. The marketing team hosts a blog giving installation tips, MP3 resources, and reviews on hard-to-find independent music from all over the world.
Here’s another reason why blogging is important. Search engines love them. Are you having a hard time finding yourself in Google? Maybe its because Google doesn’t think your site has current, fresh, entertaining content that would be interesting to its customers. But if you had a blog running on your site -- and it’s well written and insightful -- guess what? You have fresh content. Secondly, the likelihood that people all over the web will link to your excellent blog is much higher than simply linking to your stale web site. Pow! There’s no better way to ensure success from Google (and, frankly, most of all the other search engines as well) than having highly relevant content which is linked to from lots of other highly relevant web sites and individuals.

Blogging’s time has come. Visit the links in this month's Buzz column for some helpful resources to get you on your way.

Until next month,

Andrew Eklund
CEO

Posted by Mike at June 27, 2003