You may have noticed (and hopefully used!) Eurekster’s Swicki widget on the right column sidebar of this blog (under the heaading labeled “Buzz Cloud”). A couple more examples of swickis can be found on my personal blog and on my daughter’s blog.

Ok, actually no I won’t blog for steak. I’m a vegetarian. But I bet plenty of other bloggers would take up such an offer.

Rajesh Setty emailed Chris Pirillo’s Braintrust list earlier this month with an email titled “Bloggers – free steaks anyone?” to promote the site AllAboutSteak.com and its sponsor Kansas City Steaks. In it, Raj wrote:

If you are a blogger and would be willing to provide some visibility – KCS wants to reward you with a gift packet (of steaks) sent to your address.

His email conjured up in my mind an image of a homeless blogger holding up a cardboard sign “Will blog for steak” — rather than the more typical “Will work for food”. (NOTE: This could make for an excellent Halloween costume for you unabashed nerds out there!)

But it also got me thinking about what is the right way to approach bloggers to get them to blog about your company/products or a client’s company/products. Something about Raj’s email got me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Thankfully though, Raj followed up later with a clarification email to the list, stating:

I should have said it better. If you receive a “gift” of steaks, all you are promising is that if you like the technology and/or steaks, you would consider providing some visibility to their “We Care” campaign.

I’m glad Raj followed up with that clarification. I think it’s critical when doing blog outreach that you don’t tie compensation to positive coverage.

WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) developed a great set of guidelines — the Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines, which provides some guidance around how to reach out to bloggers. Some good advice there!

So… will you blog for steak?

Anyone who knows the online retailer of shoes and handbags, Zappos will know that they are renowned for their stellar customer service. But this story blew me — and many other bloggers (such as Seth Godin, Jason Kottke, and the folks at 37Signals) — away:

I Heart Zappos

In this post, Ms. LaMarr shares a poignant and heartfelt story that brought tears to my eyes. She described how she bought shoes for her mom that didn’t fit, didn’t get around to returning them, then her mom died. Out of her heartache came one ray of light: from Zappos, the online shoe store where she bought the shoes. Not only did Zappos arrange for a UPS pick-up, they sent her a bouquet of flowers along with their condolences.

Guess what? The customer that Zappos treated with such care and concern happened to be a blogger, and one with some readership. The word of Zappos good deed spread like wildfire. It’s still spreading. This was no PR stunt, it was simply a genuine act of human kindness, and it earned Zappos a ton of kudos in the blogosphere. This is inadvertent blogger outreach at its very best.

Contrast that with the slap in the face that Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza issued to one of their supposedly valued customers by inadvertently CCing the customer in his email reply to his employee:

Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.

As you can probably guess, word of the Spirit Airlines CEO’s affront got out to the blogosphere. And boy did it turn into a blogstorm. Now this post is number 3 in Google for “spirit airlines.” Classic. I don’t feel any sympathy for the airlines. Ben Baldanza literally asked for it — “Let him tell the world how bad we are.” Oh brother.

All this just goes to show, one good (or bad!) turn deserves another. Karma is alive and well in the blogosphere.

Okay, I’m not actually blogging this from Beijing. I’m blogging it from Hong Kong, as I left Beijing a couple of days ago (my favorite city in Asia, BTW, of the four I’ve visited in recent years: BJ, HK, Shanghai and Tokyo).

I’m out here to attend Ad:tech in Beijing, which wrapped up last Wednesday, and I’m off next week to DoubleClick Japan’s client conference, Insight. Mostly, I’m in the region to present about trends in US online advertising as well as to learn about the same on this side of the globe (12 hour time difference from NY; jet lag is a bitch!). But while here, I attended a session on using social networks and blogs for marketing purposes, which included two of this very blog’s contributors, Des Walsh, who moderated, and Debbie Weil, along with Jason Ge, National Sales General Manager of Sina, China’s biggest portal.

As I wasn’t really focused on blogs on this trip, most of what I learned about the phenomenon as it’s taking place in China came from this panel, but it was honestly one of the better panels at the show. Debbie’s already been blogging up a storm about her trip, and I’m sure Des will catch up shortly, too. (Deb’s made various notes, but not about the panel; she also have various video clips of it I expect she’ll upload shortly.) Meanwhile, here are some of my notes from the panel:

• China apparently already has about as many people using the Internet as the United States does, and in probably a year or so it will have more than the US and Europe combines. Moreover, a staggering number of these are active with blogs, as writers and readers. This already includes many businesses.
• Sina is one of the most popular hosting services for blogs. To that end, it employs legions of editors (one thing China is not short on is people), who, among other things, chose blog posts to feature prominently on the site. While many topics of blog posts, including business, are welcome, politics is not; to that end, Sina employs software algorithms to do much of the censorship that is a political reality in the country.
• An interesting phenomenon of blogging in China is that blog readers are comment crazy. It’s not unusual from the sound of it for individual blog posts to generate thousands of comments. Sina’s Ge related an anecdote of a furniture business blogger who offered a free sofa to each reader to post a comment at intervals of 1,000 (i.e., the 1,000th comment, to 2,000th comment, etc.). He gave away 18 couches.
• An even better Sina anecdote, some popular TV news personality who has a blog complained about the fact that Starbucks had a store inside Beijing’s historic Forbidden City (nicknamed “Forbidden Starbucks”). Sina editors linked to the post from the site’s homepage, and commenters went on to generate half a million comments! As a result, Starbucks HQ got the message and closed the store.
• Presumably one reason posts generate so many comments is that having a voice in the world is more a novelty in China than most places. One thing came through loud and clear at Ad:tech altogether: the Chinese Internet may be lagging the US market in some respects, such as the nuances of online advertising I’m paid to care about, but in terms of social media in general, it’s on fire.
• To wit, YouTube just launched Chines-language versions of its site in Hong Kong and Taiwan this week.
• It would be naive, however, to think all this adds up to unbridled openness in the Chinese market. China remains a communist country, of course. In fact, Ad:tech Beijing coincided with the 17th conference of the Chinese Communist Party. That was probably the explanation for why a variety of Internet services, including YouTube, were blocked for part of the week last week.

Hello Readers,

Good news: BusinessBlogConsulting.com is back!  Regular readers doubtless have noticed that this site has slackened in activity of late. I blame myself — life has gotten busy. That’s a lame excuse for a blogger, I know, but frankly I needed a break, and I guess the rest of our contributors followed suit.

But it’s time for a change. To that end, I’ve found a new steward for this site whom I’m sure will rise to the challenge to restore it to its earlier excellence and beyond: contributor Stephan Spencer and his partners at NetConcepts will hence force direct the content and business of this site.

Long-time readers will recognize Stephan’s name as one of our stand-out experts, whose many posts have been among the most popular with readers over the last few years. I have every confidence that he and his colleagues will take this site to a whole new level as a premier resource for marketers and bloggers looking to make the most of this unique medium for business promotion.

As for myself, I hereby pledge to resume my active contributions to this site. I’ve enjoyed my rest and am rejuvinated and inspired to return to the cause. Most of the rest of our regular experts have likewise agreed to rouse for our hiatus and rally to new deliver new insights on the topic of using blogs to maximize business performance.

Please join me in congratulating Stephen and NetConcepts on taking the reigns of the site and ushering in a new era for this blog.

It’s easy to start a blog. Not so easy to be successful. But what is success? Especially for a business blog?   Some of the measurable outcomes from business blogging include:

• Media attention
• Speaking requests
• Customer loyalty
• Inbound links to the blog
• Search engine ranking for the corporate site
• Corporate website traffic
• Leads/sales initiated
• Volume of blog traffic
• Technorati and other credible rankings
• Search engine ranking for the blog
• Increased company visibility within the industry
• Increased media coverage
• Improved customer loyalty
• Increased sales leads/revenue/new customers

And there are more depending on the purpose of the blog, whether it’s to create thought leadership, announce new products, offer SEO friendly content for a troublesome CMS or ecommerce platform, generate leads, support media relations initiatives or simply serve as a sounding board for ideas.  The true measure of success for a business blog is entirely predicated on its purpose.

Once defined, implemented and measurements are put in place, any business can create a successful blog. It’s simply a matter of time, resources and a willingness to try until “what works” reveals itself.   Here’s a more detailed exploration of this idea as well as a long list of considerations that companies need to be aware of when starting a company blog. If you’re into checklists, then be sure to read Stephan’s “Essential Checklist for Starting a Blog“.