The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is trying to stir things up with a new group blog Word of Mouth vs. Advertising, which is also the topic of an upcoming WOMMA conference in NYC on Sept. 28. Seems like wishful thinking that Word of Mouth marketing would somehow "defeat" traditional advertising and actually shift much of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually by U.S. marketers on "traditional advertising," but WOMMA is nothing if not plucky. The danger, of course, would be to burn out the PR interest in their presently buzzing topic with too much hype.

I’m pleased to announce DoubleClick’s first blog, the DART Motif Blog. It’s part of the roll-out for the new web site supporting Motif, DoubleClick’s rich media advertising platform. I’m still working on getting a business blog of my own launched around here (stay tuned), but this one is written most capably by Ari Paparo, Motif’s product manager and an experienced blogger in his own right.
 

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Communication consultant Debbie Weil dings the executive bloggers at Boeing and GM for neglecting to comment on recent big negative news about their companies (CEO resigning in sex scandal and major drop in earnings forecast respectively).

She’s got a good point. It’s also probably the kind of scenario that freaks out most companies about blogging. But, as she points out, if you’ve got it, you might as well flaunt it (i.e., you’ve earned positive credibility with an audience of readers through these blogs, so you may was well use the channel to advance a positive interpretation of such bad news rather than ignore the elephant in the room).

Debbie Weil: GM & Boeing: Corporate “Tell-It-Not” Blogs

iMedia writes:

Speakers at a recent Blog Business Summit believe blogs are replacing email as an effective two-way dialog tool.

Going forward from the recent Blog Business Summit in Seattle, two powerful messages have been reverberating through the marketing world:

1. Blog feeds are rapidly replacing email as a form of proactive marketing communications
2. Marketers wishing to post their own blogs should not approach the form as another one-way communications medium, but should plan for their blogs to offer two-way dialog.

Yawn. I’m so tired of this idea that blogs and/or RSS are ever going to replace email (as I’ve said before). Why do journalists always think that a new medium means the death of an old one? Radio is still doing very well, thank you, despite TV having come along some 60 years ago now. Blogs are good. Email is also good. Spam is bad, but spam is not the end of email. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. As for RSS, I still don’t use it. Still haven’t found a platform I really like. And besides, I get too much email already and don’t feel like I have to stay up to the minute on every blog in the world… But maybe that’s just me.

iMedia Connection: Bye Bye Email?

Appropriate that Fortune just announced its Best Companies to Work For list, as Dana VanDen Heuvel and the Bloggers’ Rights Blog have both just published black lists of companies that are especially unsympathetic to bloggers (usually in the form of firing them for blogging).

If you can get past the corny lead without puking, the story suggests that Jupiter Research’s blogs are actually driving real business leads:

The at-times offbeat journals are stirring sales leads from clients who otherwise might not have contacted Jupiter, says David Schatsky, chief of research at JupiterMedia’s Jupiter Research unit.
“One example is tech vendors whose marketers are checking to see if Jupiter mentions their products and what we say about them,” Schatsky said.
The company can’t say just how much business the blogs have generated. But Schatsky says scores of potential clients have contacted Jupiter because of the blogs.

Investor’s Business Daily: Blogs Bring A Boost To Jupiter Research

I’m not sure who Jeff Kang is (he sent me a note via Orkut, indicating we were Orkut buddies, although I don’t recognize his name and Orkut apparently isn’t feeling well tonight so I can’t look him up there at the moment). It’s apparently a PHP-based, server-side blogging tool. The site is thin on details about the product or installation (I haven’t bothered trying to upload it myself yet), not to mention About Us stuff. The G-name would lead one to believe Google has a role, though it’s far from clear whether that’s the case. There is also an accompanying blog, not surprisingly, and a forum, but niether shed much light (okay, I just barely scanned them, but nothing caught my eye). If anyone knows more or has observed more than I have, I trust you’ll point it out.

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Scanning Userplane’s site, I honestly couldn’t tell you what the hell they do; something about Flash communication apps. A lot of marketing doubletalk, if you ask me. But they blog, which we like. Here’s the “About Us” boilerplate from a recent press release; maybe you can make heads or tails of it:

Userplane is a pioneer in offering Flash-based Web applications that support live text and audio/video communication. Based in Los Angeles, the company is an innovator in enterprise community messaging that enables a broad range of Web sites to run branded communication applications. Using Macromedia’s Flash Communication Server MX technology, Userplane Apps are deployed internationally on sites ranging from online communities to intranets. The application suite reaches tens of millions of users and supports over a million live conversations a month. Userplane continues to provide forward-thinking Web and software development for industry-leading clients including Red Bull, Honda, 1-800 Flowers, and Juicy Couture.

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Weird photo that
Steve Jurvetson
uses on his blog

A few weeks ago, I wrote that high-profile venture capitalist Tim Draper was blogging. Looking back at that site, I’m not sure it’s really a blog at all. He’s an author on Always-On, and it’s really hard to call things on that site blogs, as their system is kind of retarded.

Regardless, his colleague Steve Jurvetson, of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is now blogging, and there’s no doubt it’s a real blog: it’s hosted on Blogspot, after all.

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A few months ago, I wrote about the Red Hat World Tour Blog. That apparently worked so well for the Linux services company that they now have a series of blogs, including an Executive Blog. It caught my eye that the first post there is from Michael Tiemann, VP of Open Source Affairs. I wonder if he’s any relations to former NYC mayor Daniel Tiemann for whom the tiny street I live on was named.

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In interesting advertising-supported blog. From their press release:

CoolBusinessIdeas.com, a Singapore-based business intelligence company which publishes a free, monthly e-newsletter that collects new, promising business ideas and innovations globally, has expanded its audience to cater to an international audience. CoolBusinessIdeas.com has also built its new website around an open blog.

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SignsNeverSleep.com is the blog of the Lincoln Sign Company, based in Lincoln, New Hampshire. It’s a charming blog, nicely designed (better, frankly, than the company’s main web site, if you ask me), and a neat mix of recently completed examples of the company’s work, a glimpse of the process of sign making in progress and personal news (a weekend hike, what J.D. is reading, a bear sighting, photos of the kids, etc.). J.D. Illes writes me:

We just recently started a weblog as the first stage in a whole redesign of our web-presence.  We are a small, custom-commercial signshop in a small resort community.

I think our blog will be a terrific tool to show our customers what it is we do.  Usually a customer comes by to visit just after we have spilled paint all over their sign by accident, not when we have just completed a beautiful project.  I am hoping giving them a peek inside our doors on a daily basis will help them get to know us.

…

Thanks

J.D. Iles

Thanks for the note, J.D., and best of luck!

UPDATE:
Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing Group read this post and was apparently so interested that he tracked down J.D. of Lincoln Signs for an interview about why he’s blogging.

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Another great example of a business blog from software maker Intuit for its accounting software QuickBooks. The archive categories for posts say it all about this blog’s business value: Client Stories, Development News, Events, For Accounting Professionals, Product Features, Resources for Small Businesses, Stories from Our Clients, Tips & Tricks, Training and more.

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Tim Draper

Big-shot venture capitalist Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson has a blog (of sorts) at Always-On. (Free registration required.)

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FCC Chairman
Michael Powell

Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is now blogging (sort of) at Always-On. (Free registration required.)

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Suw Charman

Suw Charman is indeed attractive (judging by her picture, anyway), and the way she spells her name is a bit strange (from a guy whose sister is named “Sue”), but I don’t think either of those help explain her blog’s name, a new entrant from the excellent Corante family of blogs. Once again, I am pleased to see a blog with a clear mission statement:

In Strange Attractor, Suw picks out patterns from the apparent chaos that is the blogosphere. She explores business blogging as well as adjacent territories such as social technologies, writing and storytelling, e-learning, digital rights and journalism.

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Duly noting another business blog from a well-known firm.

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Just noting, as I should have earlier, a series of developer blogs from IBM.

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Kirsten Osolind

Kirsten Osolind writes:

Hi Rick: I don’t make your blogroll. Darn. If I told you it was my birthday, would you add me for a gift? Perhaps not ‚Äì you don’t know me.

Oh, heck, I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Happy Birthday, Kirsten! (Unless, of course, you’re just yanking my chain and it’s not really your birthday, in which case I refer you to the gist of this post.) Kirsten’s blog statement of purpose (I love those):

RE:THIS BLOG…a fun, flippant BLOG with points of interest about women & small business, from re:invention’s founder, Kirsten Osolind. Dedicated to all good women & men (and those sorely deserving a good thunk on the head).

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It really is remarkable how cool Microsoft is about blogs. This post on Community Kitchen explains:

We just launched the Microsoft Community Blogs Portal, a searchable listing of blogs by Microsoft employees, categorized by product or technology topic. The project also makes it easier for pages across Microsoft.com to publish lists of relevant blogs and posts from those blogs.

Isn’t this the kind of thing you’d expect from Apple, considering how innovative they’re supposed to be and all (yet, do they actually do anything with blogs as a company?).

Thanks again to Olivier for the link.

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