Following up on yesterday’s post regarding blogging and intranets, CIO has an interesting article that talks about 2006 intranet trends (thanks Jeremiah for pointing me to this). One of the trends they mention is blogging and RSS. This is what they have to say:

Blogs come and go but RSS will remain
Arguably blogs are the most significant Web phenomena of 2005. Everybody from presidential nominees to the local postman is blogging these days. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Google and Maytag have been caught in the hype and have enthusiastically set up both customer facing blogs and internal facing ones too. But will the employee blogs last? Will there be even more blogs in the next year?Some employee blogs will last but unfortunately most won?Äôt. Many companies that enthusiastically set up employee blogs ignored the two most important ingredients for blogging success. The first is that the blogger needs to have something important and unique to say. According to a recent survey by America Online, the most popular blogs are the most personal and opinionated ones too. Most organizations have cultures that subconsciously encourage information hoarding and group think. These organizations will find that their employees are reluctant to share their knowledge and personal insights unless they see tangible benefits in doing so. As a result most employee blogs will be superficial and boring unless, of course, they are anonymous.

The other ingredient that drives blogging success is independence. The most successful bloggers are also those who don’t feel censored by anyone else around them. Company cultures often force employees to be extremely self aware and reluctant to say or do anything that may put them at odds with the official order. This too will limit the success of blogs in the enterprise workplace. The people who have something really important to say will be the ones most reluctant to say it.

The related technology to continue to keep an eye on is Real Simple Syndication (RSS). Companies that embrace RSS as a content format and use it to publish information to employees will have far greater success than with blogging alone. Enabling employees to subscribe to subject and department specific RSS feeds and then view them via readers will enable more targeted, community focused conversations in the workplace. And the ease with which postings can be viewed in an RSS reader will encourage more employees to participate. For RSS to be adopted however, companies will have to let their employees subscribe to both internal and external RSS feeds. If this happens, then I believe that in some companies blogging combined with wide adoption of RSS readers will become even more relevant than the company intranet.

 

Most of the press on blogs has been centered on the myriad of benefits blogging brings by helping create a dialogue between a business and its customers (or potential customers). While blogs are a great tool to help you connect and communicate with customers, blogs can also be an indispensable tool for managing internal communications and knowledge management. FastCompany wrote about blogs being integrated into intranet strategies two years ago. In the article It’s a Blog World After All, FastCompany had the following to say:

Corporate America is jumping onto the blogwagon for many of the same reasons all those journalists, brooding teenagers, and presidential campaigners are already on board. Unlike email and instant messaging, blogs let employees post comments that can be seen by many and mined for information at a later date, and internal blogs aren’t overwhelmed by spam. And unlike most corporate intranets, they’re a bottoms-up approach to communication. “With blogs, you gain more, you hear more, you understand where things are going more,” says Halley Suitt, who wrote a fictional case study on corporations and blogging for the Harvard Business Review. “Even better, you understand them faster.”

Just because your blogs reside behind the company firewall doesn’t mean that you don’t need to establish blog strategy, policies first. A poorly planned blogging campaign is worse than not blogging at all regardless of whether the blog is in front of or behind the company firewall.

If you would like to discuss if your company could benefit from adding blogs to your company intranet, please drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.

Great news! Jupiter research released a study that, if correct, indicates that blog consultants are going to be very busy this year! Findings from the JupiterResearch study on corporate blogging:

• 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.
• Only 32 percent of marketing executives said they use corporate Weblogs to generate WoM around their company’s products or services.
• 64 percent of executives spend less than $500,000 to deploy and manage corporate Weblogs.

Like most people you’re probably thinking that 70% is awfully high. Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing thought there was something not quite right with the study, so she sent them a note asking them if they could clarify how they had got that number. This was the response:

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?Äôm sorry I didn?Äôt tell you this earlier, I didn?Äôt realize that your company and blog were so closely affiliated.

If you?Äôd like more information about becoming a client or purchasing a report, please let me know.

A weak reply if you ask me. Fard Johnmar also thought it was lame as well and plunked down $750 to purchased the report. He’s provided a professional and objective review of the JupiterResearch study on Healthcare Vox. Interestingly, even after reading the report Fard has unanswered questions about the methodology.

“I feel it is important for me to share my observations about the report because it is far from adequate. I have two pieces of advice for readers: Don?Äôt buy this report. Don?Äôt accept the results of this survey.”

I suggest you read Fard’s full post.

My conclusion is that JupiterResearch was a bit optimistic. I do think that many businesses will embrace blogging as an effective corporate communications tool, but 70% by year end is unlikely.

The latest issue of BusinessWeek Online has an article called Polluting The Blogosphere – Bloggers are getting paid to push products. Disclosure is optional. The company behind this dastardly deed is PayPerPost. It goes something like this:

To Advertisers:

PayPerPost is an automated system that allows you to promote your Web site, product, service or company through the PayPerPost network of bloggers. Advertise on blogs to create buzz, build traffic, gain link backs for search engine ranking, syndicate content and much more. You provide the topic, our network of bloggers create the stories and post them on their individual blogs.

To Bloggers:

Get Paid to Blog. You’ve been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That’s about to change. With PayPerPost advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics. Search through a list of topics, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of opinions being bandied about. Jason Calacanis sums it up best – The currency of blogging is authenticity and trust… you pay folks to blog about a product and you compromise that. I would almost care about this, but it’s so obvious to everyone that this is either a joke or an idiot that there is nothing more to say.

Of course, Scoble hits it on the head as well - After all, I read blogs and forums to try to learn the TRUTH about products, companies, movements, and ideas. Advertising rarely brings truth.
I guess this sort of thing was inevitable especially when you consider how far Hugh MacLeod hit one out of the park with Stormhoek. I suspect that this pay to blog tactic will not gain much traction as the bloggers that would participate in such a scheme dont have the kind of currency to deliver a decent ROI to the advertisers.

Better organization is much more than the key to better blogging – it’s the key to better living. Easier said than done, I know. But there is a website that can help you out. Ariane Benefit’s Neat Living is about simplifying, letting go of clutter, organizing, “thinkbuying,” resisting consumerism, getting healthy, working with passion, charity, ethics, and having fun too! The blog is packed with tips and great ideas to help you get out from underneath all of the clutter that is keeping you from realizing your true potential. Ariane’s posts exude passion and motivation. In fact, I’m going to cut this post short so I can tidy up my office workspace, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.

Multiple Choice Question

Q: What is one of the primary benefits of business blogging?

A: Increase online exposure through improved search engine rankings.

B: Create new business relationships and nurture long time partnerships.

C: Improve internal and external communications.

D: Get Smarter (Improve industry knowledge).

E: All of the above

If you answered “E” – all of the above, you’re right. While most people focus on benefits A-C, one should not overlook the fact that following blogs in your industry will make you more knowledgeable. There are literally hundreds of quality blogs for each business industry/discipline. In my RSS news reader, I have about 10 blogs that are focused on Business Blogging and about 20 more blogs focused on Marketing. I am positive that if there is breaking news or something profound being said about either of these topics, that I will find out about it in one of the blogs that I follow.

Case in point. For the past few weeks, I have been trying to find a site that provides ongoing case studies that discus how small to medium sized businesses have integrated blogging into their marketing mix and the benefits that they have received. Well, today I opened up Bloglines and found what I was looking for.

Want to convince your company that a blog can help them?

Naked Conversations has a great heads-up on The Pajama Market. The Pajama Market focuses on a different small-business every day, and how they have integrated blogs into their marketing mix. Everything from pubs, to resorts, to knitting companies are covered. TPM covers how each business is utilizing the blog, their favorite posts, and how effective they feel the blog is in helping the business grow.

If you’re like me, catchphrases like ‘markets are conversations’ are good up to a point, then you need to see real-world examples of ideas being put into action. TPM gives us that, and shows what can happen when a business actually tries to COMMUNICATE with their community, instead of just advertising whatever stale one-way message you want them to hear. The Pajama Market definitely goes in the ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ file.

The difference in my perspective in contrast to Patrick’s is that most of the value to me in blogging is to allow people to “meet” me and allow us to create conversations through the blog. Much like having an open studio, a blog allows me the opportunity to discuss my ideas about art, about blogs, about conversations in cyberspace, The blogs let me feel out the audience, share my personality, show some of my work and in general share what’s going on in my life with people who are interested in doing a little evesdropping. – Susan Reynolds
Essentially, my view on the monetizing issue is that a blog can serve a perfectly useful and even productive function in a business by helping raise awareness of the business, helping to build trust and providing other benefits, none of which need to be directly attributable to this or that sale of goods or services on or directly from the blog. – Des Walsh

For myself, increased traffic to my website (tripled) has resulted in a doubling of revenues last year alone, and it’s going to be even better this year.

But I blog for the pleasure of writing, and it also serves to clarify my ideas, thoughts and purpose. I also learn through writing. That is just how I consolidate things I’ve read.

Why do you blog? I mean, besides all the money? Sure, increased traffic is good, so are the relationships and new opportunities, and reaching a global audience. For me, it’s not “show me the money,” it’s “show me the fun!” – BlogSquad

Indeed, you are all absolutely 100% correct. After reading through the comments and re-reading my post I realize that I came off like a used car salesman. Just to clarify, I do not believe that the main reason businesses should be blogging is to hard sell products/services. On the contrary, blogging, IMHO, is about initiating and nurturing relationships that will help to generate business. However, not offering the occasional call to action on your blog is like handing out your business card at a networking event and not telling the person to please call if he/she ever needs your services.

Dennis D. McDonald says it best here:

I’ve found that I am more successful when I incorporate a call to action in the targeted communications I direct to target clients via phone and email. I use embedded referrals (links) to my blog as a supplement to my resume and to illustrate capabilities relevant to solving specific problems I think ae relevant to that client.

In that respect, I view my blog as an integral part of my sales process, but I do not use it by itself specifically in a “call to action” sense.

But what actions do I promote via the blog? That’s a fair question and one that I use my blog visit records and Google Analytics to help answer.

When I do a targeted emailing or call campaign I can measure a variety of things:

1. I can often tell when a targeted person has visited my blog after an email since I can track specific IP addresses.
2. I can tell how often my resume, my about me page, my white papers, and my RSS feed page are visited by using Google Analytics ?Äúconversion goals?Äù tracking process.

These responses to my “calls to action” are much less concrete than, say,”click here to add item to shopping cart.” But they do give me some sense of how well my blog is doing in terms of the overall cycle of communications relative to my networking and business development activities.

You’ve jumped into the blogosphere with both feet. After diligently developing and sticking to your blog strategy, you begin to see the fruits of your labour traffic to your site continues to increase each week and you’ve started to get good reviews from peers and colleagues. Everything is going according to plan except that you have not been able to monetize your traffic presumably the main reason for starting your blog.

This is something that I have been wrestling with. You’ll notice in my previous post that I concluded with, “If you’d like to learn more about business blogging, please feel free to download our Corporate Blogging 101 whitepaper. If you’re already up to speed on business blogging basics but would like to discuss whether it makes sense for your business to have its own blog and a rough estimate of how much it would cost to get your blog set up, please feel to contact me.” Is this something that I should be putting at the end of every blog post or is this too in your face?

The question at hand is this – What have you done to create an effective call to action in your blog?

I’m looking for case studies on how blogs word of mouth potential
impacted a small businesses bottom line. I’m primarily interested in
knowing if there are case studies whereby a retail shop had set up a
blog and the benefits that the retail shoped reaped from the blog.

My reason for asking is that I run a web design and blogging
consultancy and I have a friend of mine who runs a coffee shop in my
neighborhood. She’s pretty internet savvy and wanted to know if a blog
could help her. I think it could, especially from a WOM perspective,
but I wanted to read up on some case studies before talking further.

This was a post that I received from a group to which I belong – the LinkedInBloggers group on Yahoo. Unfortunately, I have been to busy to respond until now.

I firmly believe that there are some businesses that would not see much benefit from blogging. On the other hand, with a bit of creativity, I think you could find a compelling reason for most businesses to have a blog. A coffee shop blog is a slam dunk IMHO.

Aldo Coffee is a great example of a coffee shop blog. The Aldo blog/website lists their menus, event schedules and other interesting tidbits without making the site cluttered or busy, but most importantly the blog tells a story that draws people to the coffee shop. The only thing that I would do differently is insert coupons with every post that readers could print out and redeem at the coffee shop. Adding coupons to newsletters/blogs worked amazingly well for me back when I was in the business. I talked about this back in March and you can find the post here. The following is an example of a branded coupon. Please excuse the fact that it doesn’t look that great – I’m no designer and I was in a hurry

Back to the original question that my fellow group member posted in which he was looking for case studies that showed a direct impact of blogging on a small business’ bottom line…Unfortunately, I haven’t come across any such case studies. However, I don’t think that a lack of concrete ROI evidence should prevent a small business owner from starting a blog especially when the cost of getting started can be extremely inexpensive – free if you sign up with a service like Blogger.

If you’d like to learn more about business blogging, please feel free to download our Corporate Blogging 101 whitepaper. If you’re already up to speed on business blogging basics but would like to discuss whether it makes sense for your business to have its own blog and a rough estimate of how much it would cost to get your blog set up, please feel to contact me.

One of the RSS feeds I use to help keep my finger on the pulse of blogging and all things Web 2.0 is Jeremiah the Web Prophet. Jeremiah recently added a cool little widget called a tag cloud from a company called ZoomCloud to his blog and then wrote a post about it. What is a tag cloud you ask? From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

A tag cloud (more traditionally known as a weighted list in the field of visual design) is a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.

First things first. The tag cloud generated by the ZoomCloud widget is not a traditional tag cloud. In fact, it really isn’t a tag cloud at all. In Flickr and Technorati, two sites that have brought tag clouds to the masses, users create their own tags (‘design’, ‘cats’, ‘California’). When enough people have used the same tag, it begins to show up in the cloud. Once a lot of people have used it, it becomes a visually dominant element, encouraging others to click it ?Äî and subtly discouraging them from creating their own tags. (Source: Zeldman.com). ZoomCloud, on the other hand generates a “tag cloud” by mining your blog and creating tags for the most popular terms. So while a ZoomCloud cloud tag may be a useful navigational tool, it should not be associated with a true tag cloud that develops organically through user contribution and participation.

Even though the ZoomCloud cloud tag is not a true cloud tag, I believe that it is a useful tool that has the following advantages:

• It gives a great visual representation of what your blog is all about to people who come to your blog for the first time.
• It is a great way for your readers to navigate your site. It’s similar to a reader clicking on one of your blog’s categories to see all of the related blog posts, but using a tag cloud for navigation provides a bit more definition and breadth because a tag from a tag cloud usually transcends multiple categories.
• It helps to keep the blog owner on topic. If your blog’s focus is on high-tech marketing, but the term “ex wife” makes it into your tag cloud, this may be a sign that your blog is drifting off topic.

Am I going to add the ZoomCloud script to my blog? I don’t know. The problem is that I only have one sidebar and it’s already looking a bit cluttered. Adding ZoomCloud would just be over the top clutter. If I had another sidebar, I would definitely give it a try.