Whatever your political persuasion — right, left, or center — the blogosphere is a great place for bloggers to share their political views and make plenty of friends and enemies. We try to follow the conservative, liberal, and everything in between of politics and political blogs/blogging — but only when it intersects with business blogging.
Have a read below of our latest entries on politics and political blogging…
The news is out on the Blogbeat.net site and the FeedBurner blog of the blogbeat acquisition by FeedBurner. On the blogbeat site a comic newspaper “They Daily Analytic” headline reads, “FeedBurner Invasion! Planet blogbeat acquired by FeedBurner Overlords”.
Blogbeat functionality will be incorporated into FeedBurner’s StandardStats service and integration will be complete during fourth quarter 2006. Current blogbeat customers will get a refund as the new service is free. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The addition of blogbeat technology should further enhance FeedBurner’s lead as a RSS resource for bloggers or will it? The reviews I’ve read about blogbeat haven’t been that great. I did a trial a while back and went back to the trusty analytics package I’ve been using for years. Integration into the FeedBurner control panel would be convenient though.
According to a recent announcement by the US Department of Defense, a new study of blogs, to receive $450,000 in funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is not about warblogging but about what sort of help blog research may provide in ‘fighting the war on terrorism’.
Two scientists at Framingham, Mass. Versatile Information Systems Inc., Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist and Dr. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, will be managing the project entitled “Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information�.
Heady stuff.
I share some of blogger Tim Oren’s concern over the ‘ontologically-based’ part of the project description and the possible implication of a ‘one-theory-fits-all’ approach, especially in terms of cultural difference. But as Oren observes, there could be some useful civilian spinoff as well as militarily applicable outcomes.
I looked for signs of a blog, either corporate or individual, on the Versatile Information Systems website, but to no avail. Without knowing whether or not the scientists blog, I wondered which would be better for a scientific study of blogging, for the scientists to have practical, personal experience of blogging, or not?
And as a former public servant and sometime consultant to government, I wonder what possibilities this story suggests for further blogging research/consultancy in the government space?
Recently JupiterResearch dropped a media release that has the social media scene buzzing. And well it should for the prestigious JupiterResearch’s study revealed that “… 35 percent of large companies plan to institute corporate Weblogs this year. Combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of all site operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006.”
That’s significant. Actually, I found that to be a little too signifcant.
According the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (written by Chris Andersen of Wired and Ross Mayfield of Socialtext) Wiki to as of April 18, 2006 29 (5.8%) of Fortune 500 companies had a blog. If JupiterResearch’s analysis is correct and “nearly 70% of all site operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006” a lot of Fortune 500s (not to mention other large companies) are are going to be pretty busy building blogs during the next six month.
Even though I admit to a drink of that kool-aid every now and again, this sounded strange. I shot an email off to Peter Arnold Associates (PR agency) explaining that I was working in the social media space, was a blogger and wanted to post their client’s findings. I explained I found the analysis odd and asked for clarification on the methodolgy, how JupiterResearch defined “corporations” and “large companies” and how they came to their conclusions.
I received two lovely responses. The first: “Let me check in with someone on the research team at JupiterResearch to find answers to your questions. I’ll be back in touch as soon as I hear.”
The second: “Information about JupiterResearch reports are available to accredited members of the press for free and clients.
After looking at your blog link JupiterResearch has decided not to fulfill your request for more information since the blog* is closely tied with your company that serves as a consultancy. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this earlier, I didn’t realize that your company and blog were so closely affiliated.
If you’d like more information about becoming a client or purchasing a report, please let me know.”
Bloggers have gotten called on the carpet for jumping the gun and posting without fact checking. While we’re not journalists, the majority of business bloggers do feel an obligation to their readers to present accurate information.
BBC readers, I tried to find out the story behind the numbers for you before I posted that I thought these findings were .. shall we say out of the ball park optimistic. Based on the information presented in their media release, I caution you to look at JupiterResearch’s conclusions with with a few grains of salt.
If anyone has read the report and can explain how “nearly 70 percent of all site operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006” please drop a comment. I sure would like to know.
Good news on the blog awards front.
Blogs produced by John Jantsch and Andy Wibbels, contributors to Business Blog Consulting, have made it into MarketingSherpa’s Top 10 Blogs and Best Podcast for 2006.
MarketingSherpa, Inc. is a research firm publishing case studies, benchmark data, and how-to information for marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals. The Blog and Podcast Awards listing is based on a readers’ choice poll, following an email broadcast by MarketingSherpa to 237,000 readers, described as primarily marketing professionals in corporate America.
Voters were asked to rate blogs on the basis of personality, usefulness, design & readability, and the question ‘would you revisit?’ For each of these the quality choices were: excellent, not bad, blah.
The Best Blog on Small Business Marketing award went to John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing weblog, started in August 2003. This is the third year in a row that this award has gone to John’s blog. I’m not surprised.
I’ve always been amazed at the amount and frequency of quality information and observation by John on Duct Tape Marketing.
And I see that now, as posted here last week, John has upped the ante, transforming his one man blog into a blog channel, with twenty two contributors on various aspects of small business marketing. Now that’s leverage! And judging by a bit of a tour I’ve just done of sites within the channel, this is already a great resource for small business, with articles on all sorts of topics, from managing people, to PR, to how small businesses can sell to big businesses – you name it, I’m fairly sure it’s there.
Andy Wibbels, the ‘Original Blogging Evangelist’ and from my personal experience a great blogging coach and mentor, took out the award Best Blog on Marketing to a Specific Consumer Demographic for his Andy Wibbels site. The citation says: Andy’s blog tells marketers and blog-writers how to attract the blog-reading public. Andy is also author of best-selling ‘Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging’ and was an award winner in last year’s MarketingSherpa awards as well.
Congratulations John and Andy!
Debbie Weil has also posted about the MarketingSherpa awards on her BlogWrite for CEOs -Â highlighting a few of her favorites among the winners and listing a few more blogs she recommends.
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A nascent blog directory, iBlogBusiness, has recently launched to serve people looking specifically for business blogs.
The concept isn’t revolutionary, but it could become a good resource for those looking for other business blogs.
Since adding your own blog is free, it’s probably worth the two minutes it takes to submit your URL to iBlogBusiness.
Getting quality incomings is essential to good search engine ranking; since iBlogBusiness hasn’t been around long enough to provide good PageRank, you should also submit to the blog directories listed in Robin Good’s Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites page.
Today the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel added 14 new blogs on specific small business topics bringing the total to 22. The collective brainpower coming from this blog network will make it the place to go for small business information.
Some of the blogs on the channel are authored by well known small business folks, some are written by people you may not be familiar with, but have much to say.
Marketing Sherpa is at it again with their third annual blog awards and this year they’ve added more categories including one for podcasting. Here are this year’s categories:
B-to-B marketing, Search marketing, Affiliate marketing, Email marketing, PR, Advertising, Marketing to a specific, consumer demographic (ie. women, kids), Blogging or podcasting as a marketing tactic, Viral, word of mouth, buzz, social marketing, Small business marketing, Non-English language blogs on marketing, General (multiple topic) marketing, Other specific niche topic related to marketing.Nominations were taken last week and this week there is voting until this Friday. Voting criteria include: Personality, Usefulness & content value, Usability & design and Would you revisit?. For some reason, and I’m not sure why, there are quite a few well known blogs that were not included.
Of course several Business Blog Consulting contributors have been nominated including:
You can vote for all or some of the blogs by rating them. Cast your vote today.
TypePad must really like the blogger line-up at Business Blog Consulting. We hit the jackpot this week. Rich Brook’s Flyte is the featured blog today.
Congrats! Rich. By the way, if you miss the write-up on the home page (6/8), catch it on the archives.
A quick (unsolicited) kudo to our own Toby Bloomberg; her Diva Marketing Blog is TypePad’s Featured Blog of the Day today (6/5/08.)
Great job, Toby!
A lot of small business owners are interested in blogging, but they afraid of starting a blog for fear of not knowing what to write about.
Often, when we’re consulting with a client on their blog we create a “recommended reading list.” It’s usually a combination of blogs from the client’s industry, similar industries, and a “usual suspects” list of blogs on blogging, like Business Blog Consulting (or my own blog, dammit!)
Well, I think I’ll be adding Pajama Market to my usual suspects. It’s a combination of “Small Business Blogs of the Day” and interviews with those small business bloggers. And yes, the “Web site of the Day” concept is sooo 1997, but for small business owners interested in blogging, this is a valuable resource.
Recent featured blogs include Green Cine Daily, featuring movie reviews from a DVD rental company, Wool Winders, a knitting blog from a knitting store, and The Tap Room, a blog from a London pub. How’s that for variety?
If I have one complaint (and apparently I do) it’s the dearth of categories. Currently there are only four: Blogging Info, Personal, Small Business Blog Interview and Small Business Blog of the Day. It would be great if there were some categories that covered the type of businesses, such as “Retail”, “Service Industry”, and so on. As small businesses fall of the home page they tend to disappear.
Still, if you’re a small business owner and you think there’s nothing for you to blog about, be sure to check out Pajama Market first.
If you are already blogging your small business, well maybe you should submit your blog for consideration!
eMarketer reports on a study by Harris Interactive, and sponsored by Makovsky + Company called the “2006 State of Corporate Blogging”.
“The study found that only a small minority of top executives are convinced that corporate blogging is growing in credibility either as a communications medium, brand-building technique or a sales or lead generation tool.”
Only 20% of the executives surveyed report monitoring blogs for mentions of their own company and only 30% reported understanding what an “internet blog” is. This spells a significant opportunity to educate corporate America on the pros and cons as well as the threats and opportunities of blogging for business.
The list of benefits for business blogging is pretty long, but the results of this study show that business blog consultants need to do a much better job of not only evangelizing blogging for corporate America, but providing case studies and practical examples that demonstrate these benefits. Nothing gets a CEO more interested than bottom line numbers.
Details at eMarketer.
Have you heard about that great conference you wish you could have been a part of but found that it was sold out or had already passed? Eric Weaver of BrandDialogue.com was that person. He decided to make a full list of the Web 2.0 or Marketing 2.0 conferences taking place in 2006. Eric notes:
NOTE: These are conferences from May 15 to December 31, and related specifically to Web 2.0 and new marketing concepts. A lot of good ones have already come and gone. Got any corrections, clue-ins to existing conference lists, or notices of additional events that are Web 2.0-related? Drop me a line at eric @ this URL.
Go and check out the list and maybe we’ll see you at that next event!
Tags: blogging conferences, web 2.0, marketing 2.0
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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.Â
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:Â
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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JupiterResearch has published a new report, “RSS Comes of Age” that finds 63 percent of large companies planning to syndicate content via RSS by the end of this year. This growth is surprising in contrast to the low “perceived” adoption rate of RSS.
“The primary challenge to greater adoption is a lack of experience with RSS and resources to deploy it,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. “However, recent offerings from e-mail service providers (ESP) and RSS service providers are lowering the barrier for feed management, deployment and measurement.”
Reading this summary reminds me of the research report offered by Yahoo and Ipsos Insight (pdf):
“27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.”
So perhaps this explains the use of “percieved” in reference to adoption rates? Many users of RSS don’t realize they are. Regardless, RSS is a fantastic tool for communication and marketing and is one of the most distinguishing features of a blog.
Mack Collier at the Viral Garden has taken the Alexa data and come up with a top 25 marketing blogs list. Some you’ve heard of, some, I suspect, you have not. I find these types of lists to be a good way to find some really good new (to me at least) blogs.
BtoB Magazine and Marqui are hosting a webcast May 18th on blogging for business – practical recommendations and strategic advice. The online event promises to inform you on:
Speakers include Shel Israel (co-author, with Robert Scoble, of the book Naked Conversations); PR professional Lynann Bradbury, Waggener Edstrom’s Sr. Vice President; and Marqui’s business blogging expert Michael O’Connor Clarke.
You can register here.
The Web Marketing Association’s call for entries in the 2006 WebAwards is underway and there is a new category this year for blogs. WebAwards is made up of volunteer Internet marketing, online advertising, PR, and web site design professionals and has been evaluating web sites since 1997. The deadline for entries is May 31 and winners will be announced September 20th, 2006.
To see the kinds of prominent agencies and corporations that are involved, take a look at the list of WebAward winners from 2005.
If you and/or your clients have a great blog, visit the WebAward.org site and enter. It could be a great online and offline promotion opportunity.
Are you curious about RSS industry benchmark metrics and RSS marketing best practices? Would you like to compare your RSS marketing results with those of your peers? Then you will be interested in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey being conducted by MarketingStudies.net.
From the survey sponsor:
“Participate in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey, conducted by MarketingStudies.net and aiming to research the RSS marketing landscape, to receive a free copy of the full 2006 RSS Marketing Survey Report, bringing you top RSS marketing best practices and metrics to compare your RSS marketing practices with those of your peers, to improve your RSS marketing results.”
Respondents will get a copy of the overview report including metrics and best practices.
MarketingStudies.net is run by RSS Marketing guru, Rok Hrastnik, who is the author of “Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS“. He also publishes a free report, “The Business Case for RSS“.
Rok and I did an interview in March 2005 on using integrated online PR, blogs and RSS for improved results in search engines. After re-listening to that interview, it’s amazing how much can change in a year. At the time, using Technorati tags and social bookmarks was pretty new. Now they are pretty standard fare from the smorgasboard of tactics for blog link building.
If you’re attending the ACCM conference next week in Chicago, you can see Rok Hrastnik in action duing a a session called, “RSS What marketers need to know“. At the same conference, I’ll be speaking on the “15 Sizzling Hot Search Ideas for Merchants” session.
For anyone involved with using RSS for marketing, then be sure to take the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey. There’s an opportunity to share your case study which may be included in Rok’s next book and your experience with RSS may help further this channel for marketing and communication.
Here’s a truism about corporate blogging: generally, nobody cares about your widgets. What people do care about is stuff related to your widgets – cool things you can do with them, related lifestyles, corresponding industry issues, etc. This is where it gets a bit trickier. Should you be deadly serious? Can you have a bit of fun??
The cleverest tack I’ve seen lately is one taken by the Ethics Crisis blog. It’s the marketing companion to a business called SRF Global Translations. (The blog appears to be the company’s Web site, as well.)
SRF is a family-run business established in 1976 that provides “mindful, nuanced, professional multilanguage translations” of unglamorous materials like corporate codes of ethics and compliance documents.
Not the kind of widgets that make you say “cool” but certainly a very useful service.
So what’s the blog about? Well, there are sections for serious discussions of global ethics. But the fun part is an Ethics Confession page where you can type in — anonymously — the most unethical thing you’ve ever done at work (“we’re not talking about taking home the office pencils,” the blog advises).
After you’ve submitted your 250-word anecdote, readers vote on how egregious your actions were… More
As blogs continue to mature as marketing tools, there are an increasing number of “blog optimization” articles and posts appearing. Stephan has written some excellent posts here at BBC on optimizing blogs that have made a world of difference for this blog. It is however, surprising how many of the other blog marketing and optimization resources neglect the importance of inbound links.
To think that researching and placing keywords in the “right places” alone with improve a blog’s traffic is only part of the story. Blogs are simply web sites with special features. Getting web sites to rank well and to engage more traffic involves a large number of variables. The same rules apply to blogs. The difference is that there are unique linking opportunities with blogs that are not common with web sites. These include:
There are also methods to gain links with blogs just as you would a web site:
Not all of these are applicable to blogs, job listings for example, but many are.
As an example, check out the #1 rankings on Google and Yahoo for Online Marketing Blog on the phrase, “marketing blog”.
Another example is Business Blog Consulting with a #1 position on Google and #4 on Yahoo for “business blogging”.
These rankings involve more than just good on-page optimization – they include attention to inbound links. So as you work on getting all of your keyword phrases in all the right places of your blog, understand that on-page optimization is only part of the job. Links can make a night and day difference for your search engine positioning as well as traffic.
For several useful blog marketing tools check out: RSS Buttons, Social Bookmark Tool, Blog Directory List, Article on Blog Optimization.
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Business Blog Consulting is a site devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lots of examples of business and corporate blogs, as well as resources to help you learn more about the topic.
Looking for a company that offers consulting on corporate and business blogging, including design, development and strategy? Consider Netconcepts.
Other stuff? Email us.
Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing
Andy Bourland of Bourland.com
Rich Brooks of Flyte
Paul Chaney of Blogging Systems Group
Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus
Josh Hallett of Hyku
Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting
Lee Odden of TopRank
Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts
Dave Taylor of Intuitive Life for Business
Jim Turner of One by One Media
Dana VanDen Heuvel of BlogSavant
Des Walsh of Thinking Home Business
Debbie Weil of WordBiz and BlogWrite
Jeremy Wright of Ensight
Rick E. Bruner is co-author and principal analyst on this report
Our own contributor Jeremy Wright is the author of this book
"The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right" with a foreword by GM's Bob Lutz..and the rest by Debbie Weil.
Produced by contributor to this site Debbie Weil. Rick E. Bruner is one of the featured experts in this report
This report is written by contributor to this site BL Ochman
I guess this was inevitable
