As unaccustomed as I am…….
Well my little BLOGthenticity buddies. I’m going to be flying the flag for us types on the panel at the upcoming Blogs in Action event at the Polish Club in South Kensington, London on March 24th. Believe it or not, the Six Apart/Nokia co-sponsored event is the first of its kind to be held in the UK. Yes, we really are that far behind.
I did have some reservations about doing it, but if somebody has to prattle about small business blogging in the UK it might as well be me, huh? I might even make a half decent fist of it, but the panel is quite an intimidating one, I must confess:
Dominic Busso - CEO of Vnunet
Neil McIntosh - Deputy Editor of Guardian Unlimited
John Howard - Technology Manager of the BBC Digilab
Charlie Schick - Head of Marketing and Sales at Nokia Lifeblog
John Dale - Head of IT at Warwick University
……………………….and me
Now I’ve written the list out, it’s more than slightly intimidating - it’s positively frightening. Still, who cares, I’m in London launching our new venture on the same day. It’s not as if I’m going specially, or anything.
My remit is to talk about small business blogging. I’ll present a case study and be quite Northern and Tinbasher-esque in the process. Hopefully it’ll be fun and with any luck I could learn something. If it goes swimmingly I might even be able to sell some BLOGthenticity t-shirts on the door. The only thing I foresee having to really think about is how business blogging will develop in the future.
Any starters for ten?
UPDATE: Here’s the wiki for the Blogs in Action event.
Filed under: Business Blogging, Paul
LOL We have t-shirts? Man, I’m always the last to know. I’m going to have to pay attention from now on.
Hey, I’m glad they invited you and I bet you’ll be the hit of the panel.
It is a pretty impressive group of people. Guardian Unlimited has five blogs, alone.
Have a great time!
I think blogologists and blogging consultants better push User Generated Comments, About Me/Bio, Contact, and Hypertext Editorial Links.
Business blogs need to verify their credibility and credentials. In surveying over 250 high traffic blogs of all types, I notice how so many are rush jobs that fail to implement the basic fundamentals of good blogging.
They rank high in link popularity on Technorati, Blogstreet, and Daypop, due probably to a distinct voice, preaching to the choir (political blogs especially), or longevity in the blogosphere.
A business person trying to use a blog as a sermon pulpit, preaching at people, and not allowing comment feedback–a very annoying trend.
It’s like they want to take a popular medium and misuse it, abuse it, confuse it.
When I land on a uni-directional, comments-disabled blog, I feel disoriented, cold, alienated. It’s like landing on Pluto. Barren. Sit in the pew and shut up. Can’t even exclaim “Amen!” Be passive and listen to the Know It All. Bah!
Don’t let businesses ruin the blogosphere like they nearly destroyed the web.
No offense intended, I’m a business person myself.
But remind them that blogs did NOT begin as digital diaries revealing what the blogger’s favorite movies, music, and politics are.
Blogs began as bulletinboard vehicles for scientists, researchers, software engineers, and internet technicians.
They originally were useful, helpful “logs” or “lists” of relevant URLs and a sentence or two explaining why the URL was important. These minimalistic, impersonal, pragmatic blogs were eventually obliged, in many but not all cases, to have comments enabled, when easy comment posting was feasible, so users could post reviews of those URLs, other URLs, or technical observations.
While a warm, candid communication with customers is vital for a business blog, never stray from the role of Valuable Information Provider. A business person, CEO, whatever, is expected to not only speak intimately of the benefits his or her products can provide, but also to share anecdotes or technical esoterica that will be fascinating and maybe even funny to customers, since they are already interested in the product field.
[…] ed under: The Tinbasher Blogs for Business — Paul Woodhouse @ 12:55 pm
……..blogging soires.
Co […]
Not only are you going to have to pay attention, you’re also going to have to pay for the t-shirts
I suggest you check out the new Observer blog from the Guardian Unlimited stable. Simply put, it’s fantastic.
Steven,
I really do wish businesses would take the time to see what blogging is all about. There’s a difference between rushing headlong into something and it failing and taking the odd risk to see how far you can push it.
I also agree that you’ve got to provide valuable information, but not to the extent that it floods the blog. I don’t like to see one trick pony blogs. As Robert has said before - give your blog a real sense of place in the world. There are loads of things you can blog about without straying off message.
Comments…..one of the things I love about BLOGthenticity is the discussion between the contributors in the comments boxes. It’s the beauty of a group blog and also helps encourage others to comment.
Hi
If you didn’t make it this site has a write-up and pics and links to other sites as well. http://dshepherd.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/3/25/477426.html
Connected