“In an ideal situation –weekly or even daily– someone is pumping the weblog with fresh compelling content. But any old content won’t do. Corporations interested in blogging need to add value to people’s lives. That’s the biggest key to a successful corporate blog that keeps people coming back. So what do I mean by add value? I mean give us a reason to read your blog. Give us something we can’t find anywhere else. Provide information that your customers, partners and prospects care about, not necessarily what you care about. Be a resource and a connector.”
Category Archives: Blogging
Three groups of journalistic awareness of weblogs
Group 3, “growing smaller every day, is completely unaware of what has happened in the past few years. They don’t know what a blog is. They are still upset that the company started a website and they don’t believe they should have to write for it.”
From an article by Paul Conley (“Learning the basics of conversational editorial“) in which he describes three classes of journalistic awareness of weblogs. [via E-Meida Tidbits]
Mom-and-Pop blogs
Okay, one more item on blogging. Patrick Hirsch did a really good piece on how blogs are becoming a marketing tool for small companies on Tuesday’s Marketplace segment on NPR’s All Things Considered. AUDIO: 3 min MP3
PhilAtkinson.org
Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. And now Phil is doing it. Blogging, that is. Phil is the head of the IT group at Learfield Communications and one of the smartest guys I know. So I can’t explain how he got close enough to the blog pool to fall in. He has resisted blogging because –he explains– he looks at computers all day and doesn’t want to spend one more minute than he has to in front of one. But he’s an interesting guy and I hope his blog reflects that. Drives a vintage GTO. Makes custom fireworks. Has the nutrition habits of a 12 year old. And I think that’s all I know about Phil but expect to learn more if the blog glue dries.
What blogs cost American business
Story on AdAge.com by Bradley Johnson (registration required):
U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. About 35 million workers — one in four people in the labor force — visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks — bloggers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break. Technorati, a blog search engine, now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009. Imagine the work that won’t get done then.
And a week doesn’t go by that someone asks me to explain “this blogging thing.”
Weblog Usability: Top 10 Mistakes
Online usability expert Jakob Nielsen gives us The Top Ten Design Mistakes for Weblog Usability in this weeks Alertbox:
1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
I sometimes get a little too cute with my post titles (#3) and I struggle to keep my focus narrow (#8) but, all in all, I’m giving smays.com high marks. He explains each of these and I urge my blogging friends to take 5 minutes to read and heed what Uncle Jakob has to say.
Don’t ask why we blog
Within the past week, two more of my co-workers (that I know about) started blogging. We’ll give them a chance to get their sea legs before we link them here. And two other friends emailed asking how to get started. What is the attraction? Is it just wanting to be involved in the latest “thing?” Why would some twenty-somthing feel the pull to start an online journal?
I suspect most of us have something to say but never had an easy way to express ourselves or a place to do so. Non-bloggers are quick to dismiss the entire idea. “Why would I want to read about somebody’s cat?” Or, “I’ve got better things to do with my life.”
It still amazes me how many bloggers share more of themselves in their online journals than in the course of their jobs and lives. Ben wrote that he leaned things about his father from reading his dad’s new blog. And some bloggers, like Dave, have a real gift for sharing thoughts and feelings.
Most bloggers would struggle to explain why they do it, but readily understand why others do.
Syngenta Resistance Fighter website
I spottted this at AgWired.com and agree with Chuck, this is pretty cool. The Syngenta Resistance Fighter website is a far cry from the typical “farm” site. Very cleverly done and, as Chuck points out, the radio/audio component is pretty nifty.
Props to Syngenta (and the site creators) for daring to think that farmers are not just a bunch of slow talking guys driving around in pick-up trucks. Why should all ag-related websites have cows and pigs and corn as the focal point.
As a rule, I don’t care for these “click on the file cabinet” navigation schemes but this one is very well done. Will this accomplish Syngenta’s objectives. Who knows? (Well, Syngenta will know) But Chuck linked. And I linked. And maybe you’ll link. And the music comes out here.
Speaking of using the web effectively, Chuck is blogging next week’s World Dairy Expo over at the World Dairy Diary. Based on Chuck’s previous efforts, you’ll know more about the Expo from reading the blog than if you were attending the event in Madison, WI.
Companies don’t blog; people blog
The headline above was my big take-away from an excellent white paper (from The Content Factor) titled: To Blog or Not to Blog? How Business Can Get Closer to Their Markets through Blogging. Their “Ten Rules for Starting Your Corporate Blogging Off Right” are on the money (for my money). Nuggets:
* You can’t blog by committee.
* Conversations are already taking place among the millions of blogs that you can tap into. These conversations—about you, your industry, your company, your competitors, and your market—will occur whether you participate in them or not.
* The unique word-of-mouth marketing secret of the blogosphere: the human urge to tell people about things that interestus, adding our own impressions as we do. This is the DNA of conversation.
* Blogging has potentially the lowest barrier to entry of any communications medium to date aside from word of mouth, and offers the farthest reach for the least cost when done right For this reason alone, there is no question that your organization should be participating in the world of blogs. This is no time not to be part of the conversation.
If you own a company…work for a company…do business with a company… I encourage you to download and read this white paper (PDF).
Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web
Seth Godin’s latest ebook, Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web, is just a little 46 page PDF file but it’s packed with lots of small but profound insights. The kind of stuff you read and think, “You know, he’s right.” Some of my favorites:
We’ve become astonishingly picky. Picky about what we buy and picky about what we watch and picky about what we read. In a world where there’s a lot of clutter and where everything is good enough, most of the time we just pick the stuff that’s close or cheap or familiar. But when it’s something we care about, we go to enormous lengths to find the very best.
Radio is officially dead, especially when wireless internet access comes to your car.
The stuff you’re putting on your marketing site or in your blog or even in your brochures or in your business letters is too long. Too much inside baseball. Too many unasked questions getting answered too soon. The stuff you’re sending out in your email and your memos is too vague.
It used to matter a lot where an idea came from. When an idea came from a mainstream media company (MSM) or from a Fortune 500 company, it was a lot more likely to spread. That’s because media companies had free airwaves or paid for newsprint, while big corporations had the money to buy interruptions. Today, all printing presses are created equal. And everyone owns one. Which means that a good idea on a little blog has a very good chance of spreading. In fact, an idea from outside the mainstream might have an even better chance of spreading.
If you write something great, and do it over and over and over again, then you’ll be unstoppable. Whether or not someone helps you.
The problem is that the very things big companies, public companies, stable companies and established companies are good at are the things that make a blog boring.
Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
If you care about your personal brand and career and impact, you need a blog. And you should start the cycle of getting better at blogging.