New Venture Marketing

Understanding and Reading a Blog (for Newcomers)

John Dvorak has an excellent post on How to Read a Blog with some great graphics that illustrate various blogging principles, courtesy of Steve Rubel .

Ten Ways Communications Will Change In 2005..

Andy Lark has written a nice piece on "Ten Ways Communications Will Change in 2005..."  I recommend it.

Business Blogging Seminar

I see that Marketing Profs will be sponsoring a webnar tomorrow on Blogs: What Every Marketer Needs to Know Now" given by Blogging and Internet strategist B.L. Ochman.  Ochman is very knowledgeable, and I recommend the seminar for anyone who wants to learn more about the use of blogs in business. 

The seminar is set for December 16 at noon to 1:30 Eastern (9:00 am to 10:30am Pacific time).

Plus Marketing Profs is offering a price break to anyone who attends and wants to sign up for their Premium service, also very worthwhile.

Don't Publish for the Sake of Publishing

From the desk of content management guru, Gerry McGovern:

   Don't publish for the sake of publishing. You may have one key message that you leave on your homepage for years. It's not a matter of having content that is new or old; it is a matter of having content that is relevant and useful.
   
   Some organizations hardly ever bother to update their websites. There are stories on the homepage that can be months—if not years—out of date. These  organizations simply don't understand that leaving this content on the website is damaging to the professional reputation of the organization.
   
   However, some organizations publish new content even when they shouldn’t. They fall into the trap of thinking that publishing is about news. Yes, an element of publishing can be about news, but that is not what the core purpose of publishing is. At a basic level, publishing is about getting the right content to the right person at the right time at the right cost....
   
   If you are not an organization that creates news, then don't have a prominent news section on your website. If you have one major message, then it is perfectly okay to promote that message in the center of your homepage every day of every year....

   It's not about being new. It is about being useful. Your job as a website editor is to make the difficult decisions in relation to what really matters to your key readers. How does news help them complete the task that they came to your website to do.

I couldn't agree more.

Business Blogging Conferences

I see there are several conferences coming up which look very good, if you are interested in learning more about Business Blogging.

 The first is the Blog Business Summit to be held in Seattle, January 24 - 25 and
“show you how your business can leverage current real-word blogging techniques, tools and platforms to promote and enhance your ventures. With an all star list of bloggers. Robert Scobble, Molly Holzschlag, Brian Alvey and Glenn Fleishmann, D.L. Byron, Lenn Pryor and others."

New Communications Forum:

The second is New Communications Forum: Blog University which its producers promise “will provide you with an in-depth, hands-on exploration of the future of communications….[From] marketers and journalists who have pioneered the use of these new tools and technologies. They will share their in-the-trenches experiences as early adopters of these new communications tools.

New Communications Forum 2005 will be held in two venues: NewComm Forum America 2005 will be held in the US near Silicon Valley, CA and in Europe, Feb 7 - 8 in Paris.

It is for senior communications professionals from leading companies and PR and marketing communications agencies.

The How to Blog 101 Series

From Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion a good way to get started on the road to corporate blogging:

T. L. Pakii Pierce is writing a series titled The How To Blog - 101 Series. Here's a rundown of his courses...

How To Blog 101 - What is Blogging and Why Should I Blog?
How To Blog 102 - Planning Your Blog
How To Blog 103 - Choosing the Right Blogging Tools and Software
How To Blog 104 - Publishing Your First Blog Article
How To Blog 105 - How To Promote Your Blog
How To Blog 106 - Blogging For A Living

Convergence Marketing

I’ve been rereading Convergence Marketing, and thinking about the impact of the Internet on business and our clients. The premise of the book is that while the Internet doesn’t change everything, it does create a major shift in how customers behave and in turn how business must operate. The Dot.com era, the authors say, taught us that successful companies don’t simply throw out the old technologies and practices in favor of new ones, but rather integrate them into their total mix.

The same applies to marketing tools and practices. Traditional techniques, such as advertising, PR, and direct mail, have not been replaced, but they sure have been impacted by a witches brew of new tools from blogs and wikis to RSS and news aggregators.

Business Blog Resources

Fredrik Wackå, of Corporate Business Blogging has written a nice "Beginners' Guide to Corporate Blogging".  The guide presents reasons to use a business blog, types of corporate blogs, what to expect and how to set a blog up.  

While Kathleen Goodwin has written an excellent white paper on Weblogs: Realigning Busines, Technology & Communication.

 

Corporate Blogs

Corporate or business blogs provide a special kind of communications that has, until recently, been missing.  For me it is at the very heart of effective communications, and I continue to be amazed by those who steadfastly resist the idea.

External blogs can be used to promote a company, its products and services, extend the company's brand, build and strengthen outside relationships, provide a more inside, look, and invaluable feedback.

External corporate blogs can be used for marketing, product management, sales, PR, hiring & recruitment.  For  communications, they can be used to address a crisis or manage an important new product launch.

External blogs play a very important role in raising a company’s search engine rankings by providing continually updated content and incoming links.  Where websites are static and rarely updated on a daily, much less hourly basis, blogs are dynamic and get updated often and drive interest in a site.

For the outsider company blogs can provide direct access to the product manager, customer service or even the CEO, a more of a personal connection to a faceless corporation and the opportunity to provide feedback that will be heard.

Internally, blogs can be used to provide company information, sustain company values and culture among members of organization itself, such as employees, a specific department or project, distributors and dealers. Knowledge blogs can provide employees with information and insights related to their work, business intelligence, an update on projects.  Or they can be used to manage a project itself, to collaborate or find answers to a specific set of issues, such as employee health benefits.  Because blogs (unlike email) are archival, you can search blogs and use them as a repository of information.  When an employee changes jobs or leaves, the information remains behind, where it can be searched, accessed and retrieved.

For all these reasons, I continue to be amazed by how reluctant most clients, outside of those involved with the new technology, are to business blogging. Corporate blogs are at the very heart of communications, and they are here to stay.

The difference time makes

I had dinner tonight with John Bierbauer, one of the best marketing managers I have run into and a client when he worked for Bell Labs.

We caught up and reminisced about old times.  And I am struck by what a difference even a few years can make.  When we last worked together it was on the launch on an exciting new verification product used in EDA.  We did many things to build to the launch:  intense PR, advertising, direct mail, newsletter inserts into the industry's lead magazine, product demos, an analyst panel at DAC, and a customer party at the Exploratorium. 

Today we would still do these things but the medium would have changed.  The newsletters would have morphed to e-zines, the direct mail to RSS feeds and email, the ads to Google Ad Words, the product demos into webnars.  The PR would be posted to the media room on the division's website. John would use a blog to announce and get feedback on the product. And we would all monitor the statistics and fine tune our program accordingly.

But somethings don't change, and it was a pleasure to catch up.  All the best John, it was nice to see you.