Owning your own brand new car is tough for some people.  It’s even tougher if you want to own a luxury vehicle.  Then they introduced leasing cars as an option.  The vehicles became more affordable through leasing, but of course in the end, you had to turn the vehicle back into the dealer and all of the money paid monthly went with it. 

Now we have blog leasing.  The people at the Blog Spot Network are leasing blogs to businesses for $499.00 per year.  They go on to say: 

Leasing a Blog Spot Business Blog couldn’t be easier or more affordable. Our interest is more in finding great businesses or expert authors for the blogs. Further, we have great interest in utilizing the power of the built out network in whole, for the benefit of all.

You can lease any of the blog spot business industry blogs listed below for one full year for only $499.00 and not a penny more. You don’t have to know any tech stuff, we build out the blog for you, host the blog, provide tech service, and more.

I suppose it had to happen in order to allow businesses into the game.  I’m not sure whether this is a viable business plan for the people at Blog Spot Network, but it would be interesting to see the numbers behind their traffic for these "properties".

Tags: blog leasing; Blog Spot Network

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This is the first I have ever heard of a blog being suspended.  Last week, the editors at the L.A. Times suspended Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State Blog for essentially putting comments on his on blog under a false name, in this instance "Mikekoshi".  Hiltzik was in essence adding to the blog conversations under a different identity seemingly backing up Hiltzik’s opinions and mocking other commenters.  The story was broken by a blogger at Patterico’s Pontifications.

This does not surprise me in the least that someone would comment under a pseudonym, in fact, my own personal blog identity is named "Genuine", and I frequently comment on personal blogs with that name.  In all my other blogs, I use my full name as I do here. 

How does this practice effect blogging and business?  Many of the corporate blogs we talk about here are written by CEO’s, company employees and C level officers within each of the companies.  What would happen if these bloggers also added to the comment sections of their blogs, bolstering their own opinions and seemingly inflating the traffic and comments on their sites, or berating other commenters to their own benefit?  I for one would think that if it was uncovered that a CEO entertained this practice that person would be tarred and feathered and would lose any credibility the blog might be producing. The conversations produced by blogs must remain an open forum, and they must have credibility in order to withstand the onslaught of criticism a company might endure.  This practice could make it very difficult for a PR person to repair something that has been done behind closed doors in the company.

The L.A. Times in the case of Mr. Hiltzik must have thought the same.  They have not reinstated his Golden State Blog, yet he has not been suspended himself.   The outcome of this case will help guide our future commenting practices in business blogs .  Is this going on in today’s business blogging?  I for one certainly hope not, but it could be argued that comments on business blogs that cheer on the company or back up its product or message could be just someone within the company.  Good PR for the company right up and until it is uncovered.  Then suddenly you have a PR nightmare.

Tags: L.A. Times, Golden State Blog, Michael Hiltzik, Patterico’s Pontifications

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This question will be looked at by the California Court Appeals this week, after bloggers leaked a story about an Apple Computer product called "Asteroid", reports Wendy Davis at MediaPost. 

Companies are constantly asking what blogs mean legally to their company, and as Court cases begin to address this new media we in the blogging business are looking closely at these cases and the rulings following arguments for an against the use of blogs.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation  a nonprofit company follows cases involving blogging and other online issues.  It is a good source for you to review for issues related to blogging and the current legal cases.  If you are doing research into what cases are being argued and how it might affect your business blogging I suggest this site is a good place to start.

Tags: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Law and Blogs, Apple Computer, O’Grady v. Superior Court, Apple v. Does

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David Kline of BlogRevolt has an article today about “What is holding back corporate blogging?”

David brings up a critical point and one that is heard often in the corporate world.  We on the front lines get to hear many of the corporate types run on about the problems with blogging–Time, money, legalities and many other reasons are given why a blog is just not in the PR budget.  As in all things, this too shall change, but for now, David has put together a thoughtful piece, with quotes from our very own Debbie Weil and Jeremy Wright.

As I sat perusing my web feeds in my aggregator, I was reading blog posts that referenced “Blog Marketing”.  One thing led to another, and I found myself staring at a most upsetting site.  A splog generator.  This is a company I really did not want to link to, but nonetheless, I want to hunt out and make these companies known.  This would be a classic example of the wrong way to use blogs for a business.  This is a problem that needs to be addressed.  I think it’s time to report this site to the Splog Terminator

Frontier Airlines recently launched a new ad campaign using a blog.  The blog is at FlipToMexico.com and it seems to be gathering steam with traffic and comments.  The premise is to sign a petition to allow Flip the Frontier Airlines dolphin to get a flight to Mexico, and they have gathered a number of signatures.

This campaign seems to coincide with the Super Bowl, so I would not be surprised to see it come to a final end there.  This is a great example of viral campaigns using blogs.  This blog by Flip, a character blog, is sporadic in its postings, but nonetheless I will be following the feed to see the final ending.  I wonder if this means Frontier is about to join in on the corporate blogging bandwagon?

 Umbria examined results in October from three blog search engines—Technorati, IceRocket and BlogPulse—and found them rife with spam sites. On average, 44 of the top 100 results on the engines were spam. For instance, an Apple iPod search turned up splogs in 80 of the top 100 results on IceRocket, and 75 and 71 on BlogPulse and Technorati, respectively.

This is a nice way to end 2005.  To give you some personal context, this is biggest blogad buy ever — 800 blogs.  This is more ads than Blogads.com sold in the entirety of 2003.  (The previous record was held by Audi, which ordered ads on 286 blogs last spring.)  I’ll leave it to the media mavens among you to figure out the larger ramifications, but for me this is just a darn pleasant way to end a good year.

 

Finally, I’m fuzzy on the details of this, but there may be some opportunity for bloggers to interact with one of the NBCites (Keith Obermann on online viral weirdness, Rita Cosby on porn and Joe Scarborough on internet addiction) as they pull together the shows. If you are interested, write me and I’ll try to put you in touch with the NBC person who floated this idea.

Shankar Gupta at MediaPost Publications reports of  PriceRitePhoto.com, a Brooklyn, N.Y camera e-retailer, that recently found that if you make angry the wrong blogger, life can be turned upside down pretty quickly and with a dangerous outcome.

Due to a terrible experience with the company, a blogger, Thomas Hawk, at Digital Connection blogged about the terrible ordeal.

Continue reading the outcome of his post.

According to a newly released report from Pew Internet & American Life Project teens are very blog savvy.  According to the report, 19% of teens are blogging, and 38% of teens are reading blogs. The number of teen blog readers translates to 8 million young adults.

Teens are adopting the use of the internet for many functions including downloading music, using IM, making online purchases, and more importantly to the blogosphere, they are deemed to be "content creators".  The study reflects

Today’s online teens live in a world filled with self authored customized and on demand content much of which is easily replicated, manipulated and redistributable.  The internet and digital publishing technologies have given them tools to create, remix and share content on a scale that had previously only been accessible to the professional gatekeepers of broadcast, print, and recorded media outlets.

What does this mean for the future?

Contuinue Reading

Not exactly the Bullwinkle I grew up with, but Denali is blogging!  After visiting the main page, you may be confused about where to find the company’s blogs. From it’s main flash page, you are not directed to a link to any of its blogs.  On the other hand, the blogs are linked to the main site.  A bit of free advice to the people at Denali, please put a link to your blogs on your main flash page.

Apart from the confusion on how to find their blogs, they are doing well with the blogs according to a report from Heather Green at BusinessWeek’s Blogspotting.  She states in her report:

Apparently for all of $700, John Nardini, the company’s vice president of marketing, created four blogs to hit different consumer interests. Of course, this doesn’t include the cose (sic) of blogging time. But they say they’re having a positive impact on drawing people to Denali’s main Web site. According to Denali pr, site visits are up 25.7% while the total time spent on the site is up 23.4%.

The blogs that are under the Denali wing are:

• Moosetopia;
• Team Moose Tracks;
• Free Money Finance; and
• Denali Flavors.

  The latter of the four blogs is the corporate blog that seems to be Denali’s flagship.

Continue Reading

  Forbes Magazine calls out blogs in its “Attack of the Blogs!” issue on the magazine’s latest cover.  In his article, (requires registration) Daniel Lyons tells us that blogs are being used for evil, saying  “they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.”

 “Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality”.

Steve Rubel discusses the analogy of blogging being like baseball.  In a discussion about whether the linking in blogs or the mention in blogs is the more important gold standard. Rubel suggests:

Baseball is a good metaphor here. A blog link/mention combo is like a home run – a four bagger. You get attention, Google Juice, traffic and branding. Blog links without mentions and plain old mentions are like doubles because in either case you get two out of these four bases.

Ahh, but what about RSS? RSS is opt-in and it’s attention. What if you score a blog link/mention combo in a popular feed you know has a high degree of attention among your target audience? Then we’re talking about a Grand Slam, right?

I’m thinking that maybe Rubel is a down and out Yankee fan, but he does hit on a good point in his metaphor.

Continue…

 

I cannot disagree that the Web log, or blog, is definitely the   Flavor of the Month. But even when chocolate is the Flavor of the Month, that   doesn’t make it any less tasty. Sometimes trendy is OK, and this is one of   those times.

• strengthening relationships;
• building your brand;
• improving customer service;
• increasing employee awareness;
• building a reputation;
• benefiting search engine rank; and
•   making money through advertising.

With that much upside, the article should sway many to consider the use of the blog in their small business.  Be trendy, why not order both chocolate and vanilla?

There appears to be a packed house here at the Business Blogging 101 Seminar presented at the Blog Business Summit by Dave Taylor.  This is promising to see with the number of people wanting to know about how to use a blog as a business tool.

Dave wanted me to mention his Madonna look with the michrophone on his head, what he does not realize, is he needs to  change the wardrobe somehow to complete the look.  If my electricity holds out, I’ll be blogging some of the more finer points.

"The future of business is findability."

Many businesses attending all have websites, but few update their content often.

"The tool that people are using are blogs to update their content".

"The difference between a website and a blog is managing a site versus managing the content".

Dave emphasizes content management to increase your search results through blogs.

Mark Cuban writes that "splogs" or "spamblogs" or "zombie blogs" are becoming more and more popular through the use of free blog services like Google’s blogger.com

Blogger is by far the worst offender. Google seems to be working hard to adjust their relevancy indexes to exclude
splog from having influence on search rankings, but they dont seem to be doing anything more than removing reported
splogs. Kind of like going after the zombies one at a time with a shovel. Can we get some help on this Google ?

We hear that there are 80,000 new blogs set up per day, and there may be reason to believe that many of those blogs are nothing more than Zombies.  How do we combat this problem?  Some say that anything with a blogger.com URL could and should be banned as spam.  This is akin to "Kill them all and let God sort them out."

[via The Blog Herald]

In a recap of a study done by The University of  Glamorgan in the United Kingdom, Michael Martine discusses the difference in designs of websites by men versus women and discusses some issues that should be looked at before you decide on a plan for your blog design.  Perhaps Michael will launch a Battle of The Blog Sexes.

  Our very own contributor Steve Rubel is on the advisory board of this conference taking place in New York City, October 17-18, 2005.

BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit is the premier executive conference for
forward-thinking marketing, communications and media executives who are
considering strategic initiatives that leverage social media — blogs,
social networking sites, collaboration tools and syndication feeds.

I’m looking forward to seeing the lineup and the speakers for this event.  This should prove to be a great forum for getting the message of Business Blogging into the hands of those that matter.