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…
Guy Kawasaki, start-up guru and Mac enthusiast, has started his own blog called Let the Good Times Roll.
The blog offers good info for start-ups, including recent posts The Art of Evangelism and The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists.
Mac fans like myself will also find interesting items, such as Guy’s take on Steve Jobs latest keynote and other Mac-centric posts.
I do wish he included trackbacks and categorized his posts, but you can’t have it all.
Weblogs Inc founder Jason Calacanis is taking BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis to task over something he said in a recent post about blog networks. Jeff argues that the internet "kills networks," particularly what he refers to as "permanent, closed networks" (though he doesn’t go into detail about what those are). Calacanis literally bites his head off in rebuttal. I love a good blogosphere fight! We haven’t had one in a while.
Sorry, I can’t let this one pass. As much as I’d like to believe the reported results of the iUpload and Guidewire Group Corporate Blogging Survey released this week, I can’t. The survey reports that 89% of companies are blogging. And that corporate adoption of blogging is entering the hyper growth phase.
Here’s the rub. The conclusions are based on 140 respondents. That’s far too small a number from which to draw such a sweeping conclusion. In addition, the way the survey was conducted taints the results. DoubleClick research director Rick Bruner (yes, Rick is the brains behind this blog!) spoke with Mike Sigal of Guidewire Group to find out more. Rick emailed me the following:
"I think the sample size is less of an issue than the sample recruitment methodology…
Oh, and not so coincidentally, perhaps, iUpload sells an enterprise blogging platform. Download the iUpload and Guidewire Group Corporate Blogging Survey here.
…He [Mike] said they sent out invitations from some
mailing list that should have been representative of the Fortune 500…
But they also put the word out to lots of [bloggers], who posted about
the survey on their blogs. Meaning that a significant number of
respondents were self-selected. Hence, it’s likely that companies who
are particularly tuned into business blogs were more likely to respond."
Makes
sense, doesn’t it? I know I was one of the respondents who took the
survey and I suspect every blogging "consultant" or expert also took it
just to see what questions were being asked. Add up the number of non-corporate respondents to the survey and I wager you’re well under 100 statistically valid responses.
In comparison, I got over 700 responses [PDF of results] to a survey I ran last summer on business blogging. The clearest result from that survey: Time is the top Fear Factor when it comes to corporate blogging.
Other results: 55% of respondents said blogging will become a
"must-have" corporate marketing tool. But it’s not quite here yet. My
survey was publicized to the 15,000-plus subscribers to my
e-newsletter, WordBiz Report.
Download the survey
You can download the iUpload and Guidewire Group Corporate Blogging Survey here. Read with a grain of salt. Then do leave a comment below. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Blog consulting has apparently gone big-time. ClickZ reports:
Interpublic-owned PR firm MWW Group today launched a Web log marketing practice. Blog 360 will advise clients on strategies to create, participate in, monitor, and advertise in blogs.
"We’ve formed a specialty practice area around blogs, but we really believe they are an important part of any communications plan," said Alissa Blate, MWW Group’s EVP and director of consumer marketing.
Blog 360 will be a component of MWW’s Marketing-360 approach, which supports brands through multiple audience contact points. Depending on a client’s needs, MWW’s plan might include creating a CEO blog for reputation and branding benefits, or a tech blog for information, Blate said. Blog monitoring will likely be a part of any plan, she added.
Ironically, I can’t find anything about it on MWW’s own site, which like so many agency sites is all in Flash and hence very hard to navigate. I can’t even find anything about their "Marketing-360 approach" referred to in the story. Dare I suggest, their site could use a <cough> blog </cough>?
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.)
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.
>From the "Now Why Didn’t I Think of That?" Department, blogger Darren Barefoot ("Technical Writer, Playwright, Raconteur, Miscellanist") has put his services up for bid on eBay with the auction item title "Rent a Blogger – Online Marketing and Technology Expert: Improve Your Company’s Online Presence and Bottom Line." Barefoot credits Jeremy Wright of Ensight with the idea, as Jeremy also has a similar auction going on.
Both writers are offering their blogging services for three months to the winning company, with 5-10 blog posts per week. More than two days left in Wright’s auction, but bidding is already up to $1,500, and with more than six days to go for Barefoot’s, bidding is up to $500, as of this writing (I’ll update on the close prices).
I suspect there will be more of these to follow and that these auctions will be cited in the future to gage the market value of blogging services.
UPDATE:
The first of the two auctions, for three months of Jeremy Wright’s services, ended today (Dec 3), with the winning bid at $3,350 by Inkspress.com.
FURTHER UPDATE:
Darren Barefoot’s auction had a big close (over $1,000 added to the bid in the last few hours) to close at $2,025.00 by eKiosk (not clear who that is).
eBay: Rent-a-Blogger
Amusing. After lecturing us that blogs are stupid, Bob Bly has launched his own blog. Who’s surprised? Resistance is futile.
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
Very interesting interview on last night’s Marketplace radio program from American Public Media, an interview with futurist Andrew Zolli of Z + Partners. Zolli talks about the impact of blogs, social networks, peer-to-peer behavior and other online trends as creating a “numerical social cartography” that is having a big impact on marketing by letting (smart) companies track buying trends in explicit detail. He knows of what he speaks (Z + Partners even have a (somewhat neglected) blog of their own), with references to David Sifry’s Technorait and The Virtual Book Tour. Here are some roughly transcribed excerpts:
Retailers and marketers of all kinds are looking around social networks to try to create new forms of economic value. A great example of that is something arranged by an author in California called The Virtual Book Tour…. This one little blog [on the virtual tour] may have 100 readers. Well, that’s just as good as going to Minetonka and doing a reading and doing a reading at the local Borders.
…
The file sharing we generate on the Web…. There’s an oportunity to see people doing that in real time and building maps and networks of their social relationships. So this person who is a friend of this person introduced this song to this social network and it spread this quickly. That’s of unbelievable value. That’s the equivalent of going into that person’s bedroom and saying “I was there when this person made that person a mix tape.”
…
Commercial anthropology is here to stay. It is going to lead to shift in how we think about global marketing. We can get very effective at reaching exactly the right five people. That’s the kind of effect this kind of social cartography has on the wolrd of marketing.
Now that’s what I’m talking about!
Marketplace.org: Internet Trends
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).
Jeff Jarvis of the wonderful blog Buzz Machine &mdash and, oh yeah, his day job is president of Advance Internet, parent to CondeNet and other major media online properties — is offering a tutorial for ad agencies and the like on what he calls “citizens’ media,” which means blogs and other stuff that may as well be blogs.
Of course, I’d be happier if big media companies called me for such a presentation, but Jeff’s already put one together and presented it to the likes of Daimler Chrysler, BBDO, and Organic, so I figured I should give him props.
Having a good niche is the secret the success of many businesses, and blogs are a great way to market to that niche. Jill Fallon has embodied that with her business Estate Vaults and its companion blogs, Legacy Matters and The Business of Life. I’m not entirely clear what the difference is between the two blogs (in general, I’m not a fan of multiple blogs for a single business author, but maybe there’s some good reason for it), but her “About the Author” page clearly describes the business proposition:
When she was essentially widowed for the second time, Jill Fallon was inspired to create EstateVaults‚Ñ¢ to help people take care of the business of their lives more easily and securely and at the same time keep their affairs in order for their families.
She believes that boomers – her target users of EstateVaults™ Рare the bridge between their non-digital parents and their totally digital children and grand-children. Boomers are at the time of life when questions about mortality loom larger even as life gets sweeter. With the proliferation of tools, they can create digital personal and family legacy archives to connect generations past, present and future, if only they get their act together.
B.L. Ochman writes about this new project:
It’s 28 people who blog about PR all getting together next week to blog about making blogs part of the marketing mix. Being PR people, they’ve turned it into a big academic thing for the most part. I am sticking to practical stuff, examples only, no theory, as is my wont.
:>)
The New PR Wiki is an accompanying wiki.
Running a small business myself, I think “Duct Tape Marketing” says it all. John Jantsch has been running this blog for almost a year in support of his consulting service aimed at marketing services for small businesses. He recently was recognized by MarketingSherpa Readers’ Choice Best Blog Awards for the small business category.
I probably should have noted Adrants a while ago, as it is quite a popular blog in the marketing blog category. The reason I hadn’t till now, I suppose, is that I am trying to catalog mostly blogs that act as channels for customer service and marketing for businesses, as opposed to simply hobby blogs about business by people who aren’t necessarily using the blogs to promote their business. There are simply too many hobby business blogs to try to include them all, and what I’m really interested in is the trend of businesses using blogs for customer support and promotion.
When Steve Hall first started producing Adrants, it was clearly a hobby site, as he had a full-time job at an agency that he didn’t even mention on the blog, so I declined to include it here before, despite the fact that Steve is a good friend. He’s now, incredibly, been out of a job long enough that I think he qualifies as a consultant at this point, so I now consider it apt for inclusion.
Besides, the blog is getting so popular, and it’s so good, it was conspicuous in its absence. Evidence of its quality and popularity, it was just voted Best Individual’s Blog on the General Topic of Marketing and Advertising (how’s that for a snappy title) by MarketingSherpa Readers’ Choice Best Blog Awards 2004. Way to go, Steve!
Jennifer Rice, who runs Mantra Branding, has been blogging here about branding since December 2003. She writes me by email:
I recently got a project from a Fortune 50 company from my blog… it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for my consulting business!
Hell-yeah! If ever there was a reason to blog, for consultants, anyway, there it is.
One gripe — a nit I have with lots of business blogs — while she links to her business site from her blog, I don’t see a link from the business to to the blog. How are your customers going to know you blog if you don’t point it out? Hopefully just a temporary oversight and not an indication that bloggers don’t think that blogging is “professional” enough to link to.
I’ve been a fan of Seth Godin‘s since his days running the one-time online marketing agency Yoyodyne, before it was acquired by Yahoo and he became a guru author of umpteen marketing books. (I even happen to know a piece of useless trivia that the name Yoyodyne comes from Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49.)
He recently sent me a review copy of his new book, Free Prize Inside. I haven’t yet had a chance to get into it, but the title and packaging alone are so clever I’m sure it’s destined to be another winner for him. Meanwhile, he also just released an unrelated free e-book BullMarket 2004, a long list of marketing resources (I’m pleased to say my ExecutiveSummary.com site was among them, although when Seth and I exchanged email a few weeks ago about it, I had hoped he’d also include Business Blog Consulting, but it seems he hasn’t; oh well).
But what I really wanted to note here was this: Just when you think the guy has got to be out of great ideas, I see he’s now on a virtual “Business Book Blogging Tour.” Details on the initiative are thing (Godin himself has only a short note about it on his blog), but it seems that for the next two weeks he’s blogging on various other business blogs as a guest blogger. [UPDATE: Todd S. of A Penny For.. notes that details of the program are here.]
First stop is at A Penny For… (here’s Godin’s last of several post today). Michelle Miller, who will also be hosting Godin next week, offers a schedule of Godin’s blog stops.
Michelle Miller, who works at the marketing agency Wizard of Ads, started this blog a few months ago focusing on the always hot (no pun intended) topic of marketing to women.
Harold Jarche is a consultant specialized in helping organizations improve performance efficiency through combination of technology and education. He started blogging earlier this year on topics (recently) including tele-education, human performance analysis and university course management systems.
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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
