Blogging for Business, Marketing Via the Internet

Unlike corporate websites, b-blogs are cheap to launch and easy to maintain, thanks to powerful, easy-to-use tools. Unlike spam, or junk e-mail, b-blogs aren't intrusive; users must click to them. Done well, b-blogs provide a fast, informal way to share information -- project updates, research or test results, product-release news, industry headlines -- inside and outside your company.

Stuart, Anne. Inc. Magazine (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Marketing

Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse

Sun Microsystems' policies about employee blogging: "You are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first, but we expect you to read and follow the advice in this note."

Sun Microsystems (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Policies and Procedures

Corporate Blogging Policies

I wrote in a recent report, that companies should have a blogging policy to provide guidelines for employees who want to have blogs. This primarily relates to employee's personal blogs and lays out the guidelines of what the company expects. As expected, policies will vary greatly depending on company circumstance. Here are a few examples and also, my variation.

Li, Charlene. Socialtext (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Policies and Procedures

Fifteen Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Below is a list of 15 companies that really get corporate blogging and produce blogs that are informative, fascinating, and a joy to read even for people who aren’t die-hard fans of the company.

Catone, Josh. SitePoint (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Case Studies

Nobody Wants to Read a Stupid Blog

Maybe your business isn’t a massage clinic, but you are probably as passionate about the heart of your business as my client is about hers. I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about your business being an extension of who you are. For your business, I believe a blog is the answer. But not a stupid blog.

Chung, Tony. Duo Consulting (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Rhetoric

Business Blogs: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

How should we evaluate the corporate blogs that do exist? Laura and I have come up with this list of criteria that we think the best corporate blogs should have. This might change as we start working through the list as we, like you, may learn a few things about what can and should be done with corporate blogs.

Fuller, Liz. Business and Blogging (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging

Using Twitter, 'The Smart Way'

Twitter is now a must-have tool if you're publishing content, undertaking online marketing, or looking to keep up with the latest trends in anything web related.

SubHub (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Social Networking

The Real State of The Blogosphere 2008

A few weeks ago Technorati came out with their annual State of the Blogosphere 2008 numbers. They revealed that 133 million blogs have been setup since January 2002. That means, on average, over 72,000 blogs have been setup every day since the blogging phenomena started. Staggering numbers!

SubHub (2008). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing

A lot of people in the weblog world are asking "How can we make money doing this?" The answer is that most of us can't. Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break. They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity. It's intuitively appealing to believe that by making the connection between writer and reader more direct, weblogs will improve the environment for direct payments as well, but the opposite is true. By removing the barriers to publishing, weblogs ensure that the few people who earn anything from their weblogs will make their money indirectly.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

Blogging: A Way to Give a Bit More Meaning to Life

I’ve realized that having a blog helps me think more about my professional activities and interactions than I would otherwise. I give them more thought because I think about whether they’re something I can write about.

Gryphon Mountain (2009). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Blogging

Dawn of the Twitter Effect

Yesterday a Twitter post (a tweet) by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore became so popular that traffic from Twitter crashed a blog. This sounds very similar to a common social media phenomenon originally known as the Slashdot effect (and later also the Digg effect), where a post on a popular social media site pushes more traffic than the target site can handle. An interesting thing here is the mechanics of Twitter, which is fundamentally different from Digg and Slashdot. It’s not a social news site, with a front page that all visitors go to.

Pingdom (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Social Networking

Don't Waste Money On A Business Blog

Don't waste your money on a business blog (unless search engine marketing is an important piece of your overall marketing efforts and you're going to invest the time and effort into making it work).

Jehring, Ben. SmallBox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Business Communication>Blogging

The Coming Facebook-Twitter Collision

Forget about rivalries with MySpace and LinkedIn. Facebook's real competition is coming from upstart microblogging site Twitter.

Lacy, Sarah. BusinessWeek (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Social Networking

Reality Check: You're Not Going to Make Money from Your Blog

Almost everyone should forget about making money directly from blogging. It's so unlikely that it's a total waste of your time trying. I am actually shocked at how ubiquitous the idea is that blogging is a get-rich-quick scheme. Or even a get-rich-slowly scheme. It's not. Blogging is a great career tool for creating opportunities for yourself. But here are eight reasons you should stop thinking about money from blogging.

Trunk, Penelope. Brazen Careerist (2009). Careers>Web Design>Blogging

Blogging: A New Role for Technical Communicators

The online transition to web 2.0, with its proliferation of blogs, wikis, podcasts, tweets, and other user-generated content, has posed a question for the state of help content. Should help material concern itself with web 2.0? Do users want to interact and contribute to help content in the same way they contribute and interact with web content? What is the technical writer’s role in relation to new media?

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>TC>Writing>Blogging

Five Benefits of Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach has quickly become an integral part of many brands’ marketing efforts. The blogosphere enables interactive dialogue between bloggers and consumers, and blogger outreach opens the door for conversation between your brand, bloggers and consumers. For any company that is looking to leverage the blogosphere for your marketing or PR strategy, here are 5 benefits of blogger outreach.

Brown, Hillary. Lava Row (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Podcasts

Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self  

Twitter.com is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS that enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. Beyond its hybrid platform, Twitter’s unique feature is its overarching question “What are you doing?”, which acts as a ‘guidance note’ on how users should phrase their postings. Although it is a ‘soft restriction’, meaning that other formats and styles are possible, this study investigates the extent to which users of Twitter are responding to the question.

Mischaud, Edward. London School of Economics (2007). Books>Communication>Social Networking>Blogging

Microblogging and Writing Error Messages

You can definitely apply some of the concepts of microblogging to crafting error messages. Like a good tweet or a http://www.identi.ca or a jaiku, a good error message must: be concise; contain useful information, for both the person reading it and technical support; and be easy to read and understand.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Documentation>Help>Blogging

Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting: Eight Characteristics to Attract Devoted Followers (Part I)

Devoted followers stay updated with each new post, podcast, or screencast, eagerly awaiting the next new one. They’re intimately familiar with your content and either comment regularly or regularly return to your site.

Johnson, Tom H. Tech Writer Voices (2009). Articles>Blogging>Podcasting>Screencasting

Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting: Eight Characteristics to Attract Devoted Followers (Part II)

Devoted followers stay updated with each new post, podcast, or screencast, eagerly awaiting the next new one. They’re intimately familiar with your content and either comment regularly or regularly return to your site.

Johnson, Tom H. Tech Writer Voices (2009). Articles>Publishing>Blogging>Podcasting

Twitter: Who Cares What You're Doing Right Now, Anyway?

An introduction to the Twitter micro-blogging web service, with quotes from people who use it for professional/business purposes.

Abel, Scott. SlideShare (2009). Presentations>Collaboration>Social Networking>Blogging

It’s Time to Shoot Your Blog

The question is, what happens when your blog stops working? When your car quits, you take it to the junk yard. When your horse quits, you shoot it out of mercy. What are you supposed to do when your blog stops spreading your ideas? Simple. You do what thousands of bloggers do every day: You quit.

Morrow, Jonathan. Copyblogger (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging

Linking to External Blog Posts from Our Documentation

A technical writer’s blog on Wordpress Linking to external blog posts from our documentation with 3 comments At work, we’ve just started a new set of documentation pages called “Tips of the Trade“. The project is still in the early stages. I thought other tech writers might be interested, so I’m blogging about it now. There will be a page for each of the products we document. The pages contain a set of links to useful blog posts written by people out there on the www. It’s a way of giving our readers more information and a way of involving external bloggers, developers and authors in our documentation.

Maddox, Sarah. ffeathers (2009). Articles>Documentation>Hypertext>Blogging

Now You Can Take That Blog Vacation You’ve Been Planning

How do you get fresh blog content even if you want a break, say a summer off of the routine of writing two posts a week? In this guest post, Anne Gentle discusses just that. The short answer? By tapping into your community or writing ahead.

Gentle, Anne. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Writing>Blogging

Anti-Employer Blogging: An Overview of Legal and Ethical Issues    

Anti-employer blogs, those which criticize companies or their employees, are posing significant legal and ethical challenges for corporations. The important legal issue is the conflict between the employee's legal duty of loyalty to the employer and the employee's right to free speech. Although U.S. and state law describes what an employee may or may not say in a blog, corporations should encourage employees to contribute to the process of creating clear, reasonable policies that will help prevent expensive court cases. The important ethical issue concerning anti-employer blogs is whether an employee incurs an ethical duty of loyalty. In this article, I conclude that there is no such ethical duty. The legal duty of loyalty, explained in a company-written policy statement that employees must endorse as a condition of employment, offers the best means of protecting the legal and ethical rights of both employers and employees.

Markel, Mike. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Blogging>Ethics