Business Week covers business blogging
Business blogs (like this one) are becoming more and more common and relevant as communication and marketing tools. There are a thousand conversations going on in the blog-o-sphere right now on the topic of how important having a business blog is. Some believe that companies will be left behind if they don’t enter the fray since their competition surely will. A counter arguement is that doing it right is time consuming and non-trivial and should not be taken as a “me too” decision.
Business Week has a good article on this topic posted here. Their headline “Catch Up…or Catch You Later”
Jason Calcanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc. says blog-or-die in his post here, and there is a good discussion on this topic over at BolderBlogs.com.
Business blogs can serve a number of purposes. If you are considering starting one for your company consider the following elements;
- What is the purpose of the blog? What do we want it to do for the company?
- Who dictates/manages what gets posted? Who’s in charge of content?
- Is this another PR machine, or is this a way to engage in conversations with our customers and the public?
- Will you allow public commentary? Will you engage contentious questions or comments with thoughtful responses?
- How frequently will you update the blog? Who gets to contribute content?
What seems to be working is when leaders from companies start personal blogs and talk about the company and themselves. It’s a business blog in a backhanded kind of way, and is effective because of the personalization. The leaders get a forum to share their thoughts in an “unofficial” communication format, but rest assured what gets posted is carefully thought out and crafted.
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