Big congrats to my buddy Steve Hall for his Adrants blog being named the #1 "Websites You Should Bookmark" in Ad Age’s (print-only) 2004 Book of Tens issue. (Just in case you thought sex had stopped selling…)

Adrants: Adrants Named Number-One Site to Bookmark

Officer Dubina, aka Jan

Oxygen Network’s show Women & The Badge, about female law enforcement officers, features this blog by one of the real-life police officers featured in the show.

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Anil Dash, VP of Six Apart (makers of Movable Type and TypePad blog publishing software), and Jim Coudal, of Coudal Partners (designers and entrepreneurial upstarts), recently gave a free online seminar about the benefits of blogging for business. Anil links to where you can listen to the audio for free. I’m not entirely clear who organized it exactly, but I listened to most of it, and it was interesting and informed. Anil plugged it in advance thusly:

Topics we expect to cover include marketing content vs. editorial content, how weblogs compare to other CMS systems, chat rooms, and discussion boards, the personal/professional balance, and syndication. If you’re already familiar with blogs, but want to get your co-workers, clients, or peers up to date on the medium, this might be a good place to start.

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This is great. Saw it first on MarketingVox, which linked to the original note on Micro Persuasion, where Steve Rubel noted that IntelliSeek is targeting ads on Google to keyword searches of Steve Rubel. Some additional quick research shows the same goes for Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis, though sadly no one seems interested in my name or, surprisingly, Robert Scoble.

I suspect this is rapidly going to become the next litmus test for cool in the blogosphere (in which case we’d soon see sad examles of people bidding on their own names through dummy sites, no doubt), the way it has been for a while to have a first-name rank on Google (e.g., despite the fact that he personally rarely blogs anymore, I see that Denton retains his enviable rank on "Nick").

In light of my recent case study on Stonyfield Farm’s blogging efforts, I decided to look at their rank on Alexa. Then I thought of something that proved quite interesting: check out StonyfieldFarm.com’s traffic (according to the admittedly dubious Alexa ranking system) compared to Dannon.com.

UPDATE:
Ironically, I just learned that Groupe Danone owns 85% of Stonyfield Farm.

I think we can safely let this pass without comment.

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When I first started this site, my main interest was really just to catalog examples of business weblogs and generally to comment on the trend. I threw the word “consulting” in the domain name mainly because basic permutations of BusinessBlog.com were already registered. I was making my living at that time as a web marketing consultant, so I though what the heck, maybe I’d pick up a bit of consulting work out of it as a perk, which sounded fun. In fact, aside from a few minor engagements, mostly which were pass-through to a weblog designer friend, I didn’t have much consulting out of it. (I did write a business blog for a travel agent friend for a while, and he did pay me for it, so there was also that.) Now I have a full-time job as a market researcher, so I’m really not interested in persuing the consulting part of business blogs, though I do still enjoy tracking the trend.

I’ve watched with interest, however, as various other folks have set up blog consulting businesses. I don’t have much insight into what success they’ve achieved in that, but I figured I’d round up some links. If you know of others, feel free to advise. (Note: I check comments more often than the dedicated Gmail address for this site.)

• 646 Industries
• Albrycht McClure & Partners
• Appnel Internet Solutions
• Big Blog Company
• BloggingWorks
• BlogKits
• BlogLogic
• BlogSavant
• BlogSite
• B-Spirit
• BusinessLogs
• Ciao! My Bella!
• CooperKatz & Co.
• Dryden Marketing
• Easy Bake Weblogs
• ExpansionPlus
• Gekko Blogs
• Hyku
• Inside Blogging
• Intuitive Systems
• LexBlog
• John Lawlor
• Mark Carey
• Moxie Design Studio
• MWW Group
• One By One Media
• Radiant Marketing Group
• Sonnet Media
• Strategic Communications Group
• Textura Design
• Wigley & Associates
• WordBiz and BlogWrite and BlogWriteForCEOs (sister services)
• Worker Bees

If you do want to recommend others (like your own), please try to have actual clients for this and not just hype your intensions as a blogging freelancer.

Christine Halvorson has a job title many would enjoy: company blogger. The company in question is Stonyfield Farm, which actually maintains four different blogs. I’ve written about their blogs before and have frequently cited the blogs as an example of a consumer company doing something interesting with blogs. To wit, I wrote Christine the following note a few days ago:

I was on a panel a few weeks ago talking about blogs at AdTech, a conference about online marketing and advertising, and one of my fellow panelists, Nick Denton, publisher of the blog media "empire" Gawker Media, said cynically that he didn’t see the business case for business blogs, particularly for a CPG like a yogurt company (I had cited Stonyfield Farm as an example moments earlier). He asked whether I knew what your traffic was and what benefit you’d seen from it, but of course I had no idea. But I thought they were questions worth following up.

So, with the blessing of her PR director and CEO, Christine graciously answered the following questions in an email interview:

1) What kind of traffic are you getting to your blogs (individually and/or collectively)?

Since we began the five blogs on April 1, 2004, we’ve had a total of 160,000 visitors. (That number combines all five blogs. We actually didn’t begin measuring until June 6.) We have discontinued one of the blogs, so now there are four.  Of those remaining four, the most recent per month visits are:

Strong Women Daily News: 15,603
The Daily Scoop:  4,049
Creating Healthy Kids: 9,659
The Bovine Bugle: 28,237

These have been growing steadily each month.

I like also to measure our [email] subscribers. Even though "subscribing" is not really "blog culture", I like to offer our readers that option. Subscriber numbers to date are:

Strong Women Daily News: 1,701
The Daily Scoop: 129
Creating Healthy Kids: 318
The Bovine Bugle: 276

These, too, have been growing slowly and steadily, with the exception of Strong Women, which has grown dramatically and quickly!

We do have an RSS feed on each blog.

2) What was the thinking behind launching the blogs in the first  place?

Our company has experienced phenomenal growth, and we have a certain "personality" in the world–we care about the environment; about healthy food; about supporting family farms.  With growth, we fear losing touch with what is a very loyal and committed customer base, and so our CEO, Gary Hirshberg, saw the blogs as a way to continue to personalize our relationship with our customers.  He wants to "be real" and saw the blogs as a way to do that–inspired in part by the success of blogs within the Howard Dean presidential bid of early 2004.

3) What is the business rationale? What are you trying to accomplish from a marketing perspective (or otherwise)?

See the above.  Again, we want to maintain a close relationship with our customers. As organics grows to be mainstream, we want to show how our brand is in fact different, and invite our readers/customers in to help us do that and participate with us in our struggles and triumphs, to the extent possible.  Our blogs "continue the conversation" we’ve had with our readers/customers since the beginning in 1987, when we had 7 cows and a great yogurt recipe. Today we produce 18 million cups of yogurt a month!

4) Are you measuring the benefit? If so, how? If not, why not and may you later? When?

We are measuring things like page views, visitors and subscribers.  Much like any public relations effort (and we are part of the public relations department), the "benefit" is somewhat intangible, but we have faith that there is one.  Somewhere out there, we have created a positive response to our brand by virtue of someone reading something that tickles them, or interests them, or inspires them in one of our four blogs. If we gave them a bit of information they wouldn’t otherwise have, or inspired them to an environmental action, or asked them for an opinion–we assume they remember us when they stand in front of the many yogurts in the dairy case at the local grocery store. We assume that relationship, that contact, causes them to reach for our product, not the competitors’, when given a choice.

5) What kind of feedback do you get from readers? I see you have comments open and that you don’t get a lot of comments but you do get some. Is there a consistent tone or refrain from the comments? Do you get feedback about the blogs in other forms? Via email, the phone, in person comments? What do investors, staff, executives, board members think?

We get a lot of comments in the blogs when we raise controversial issues (and we’re trying to do more of that).  We asked once who should be the first female president–that inspired a lot of comments! And we asked what was important to them in the 2004 presidential election. We asked, "Is God male or female" and that was REALLY popular! In The Bovine Bugle, we get a lot of nostalgic comments.  The Bovine Bugle is written by one of the organic dairy farmers who supply us with milk.  He just writes about his daily life, and the challenges and differences with running an organic farm, versus conventional farming.  Many readers will comment about their memories of a childhood on a farm and how they miss it, and how The Bovine Bugle brings back their memories. They also seem to enjoy this glimpse into where their food comes from.  In Creating Healthy Kids, we seem to have inspired a lot of professionals in the nutrition/school food/public policy arena, which is exactly what we wanted, and they have strong opinions on junk food in schools, which is why we started that particular topic of blog.

I often get direct comments to me about how much readers enjoy the blogs.  I don’t think we’ve had a lot of comments to our consumer relations lines about them.  The "blogging community" seems to like what we’re doing also.

6) Is blogging helping sell more yogurt?

See #4 above.  It probably affects someone’s buying decision. The good will generated by the blogs is hard to measure, but we assume it will have a positive impact on our bottom line.

Also, we have a huge website and sometimes our blogs are a great way to highlight some of the web content that might otherwise get lost.  In this way too, we assume we’re steering some blog readers to buy our product, and some to become subscribers to one of our four e-newsletters.   

7) Anything else you’d like to comment about the experience so far?

It’s been a challenge keeping up with 5 (and then 4) blogs, as a one-person operation, but it’s been incredibly fun and I hope more and more readers and consumers find us and participate. We also plan to add another blog after the turn of the year (topic area still confidential).

8) Do you have a sense of repeat readership to the blogs?

It’s hard to measure, except perhaps by the subscriber numbers above. I get folks writing directly to me saying, "I love your blogs. Keep it up." That sort of thing.  I actually had one woman say she was housebound with cancer and looked forward every day to her blog entry coming into her computer!

[See update here]

Poynter reports on a bold new initiative by the French newspaper LeMonde which has opted to let its readers create blogs on the newspaper’s site. In order to blog, readers must subscribe to LeMonde’s premium online service, which costs ‚Ǩ6 ($8) a month, according to Poynter.

Poynter: LeMonde Lets Users Blog

A handy list of newspapers that syndicate their content in XML.

MediaDrop: Newspapers with RSS: A List

Two updates:

• I just updated my earlier post on the list of many marketing blogs with dozens of examples
• I’d love for someone to review MSN’s Spaces blog platform for me (for 25 big ones!)

More newly noticed big-shot blogs:

• Tom Peters
• Laura Ries
• Eliot Spitzer

For those of you who have enjoyed my sparring in recent weeks with direct marketing copywriter Bob Bly, a big name in his field, over the utility of blogs in the marketing mix (e.g., here and here and here), now you have a chance to see the sparks fly in person, courtesy of the American Marketing Association.

I’ve wormed my way into the AMA’s all-day seminar Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website, moderating the panel at the end of the day for the NY event, January 21. Originally scheduled panelists will include blogger and marketing experts Toby Bloomberg, Steve Rubel, Bill Flitter, Ben McConnell, Dana VanDen Heuvel and Dave Williams. And just to keep things interesting, I recommended we include blog skeptic Bob Bly, to which he graciously agreed. Promises to be lots of fun.

Granted, it’s not a freebie ($695 for non-AMA members), but if you can’t afford to attend, at least give us some linky love, so more marketers with actual conference budgets might get tipped off to the opportunithy.

Nothing-special review of the viability of ad models for blogs. Nothing really on using blogs as a marketing tool. Usual suspects featured ‚Äî Copeland, Denton, Calacanis ‚Äî as well as MayItPleaseTheCourt.net‘s J. Craig Williams. Also, a spokesman from Audi comments on its sponsorship of Denton’s Jalopnik.com.

BusinessWeek: The Business Of Blogging

Continuing to show its fascination with blogs, Microsoft has just released a new blog publishing system of its own.

Any reviews out there yet?

UPDATE:
As one commenter notes, bOingbOing has a funny/disturbing post on about how MSN is censoring authors’ ability to use dirty words in the titles of their blogs. Other reviews also noted in comments below.

ANOTHER UPDATE:
Further details from PaidContent, AP and a press release.

CALL TO ACTION:
Anyone want to review this platform for me for $25? (If so, see review terms here first.)

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The American Marketing Association is holding a three-city seminar in the coming weeks about business blogging in Seattle (Dec 17), New York (Jan 21)  and  Chicago (Feb 18). Chaired by business blogger Toby Bloomberg. From the sales copy:

Internet surfers, advertisers, journalists and even politicians do it. But are blogs a credible marketing strategy for your brand or company? Experienced bloggers answer your questions and show how to incorporate the newest internet-based strategy into your organization’s marketing plan. Leave this marketing blog workshop with innovative ideas and specific techniques to apply directly to your own marketing strategy.

Costs $695 to attend for non-AMA members (only slightly cheaper for members).

AMA: Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website