Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Day 2: Emergence of Ideas

July 13, 2004

The topic for our second day was Corporate Blogging. This generated a multitude of posts, including an interview with uber-corporate-blogger Robert Scoble, a discussion of ethics in PR and many, many how-to articles. The full list can be found here.

As happened Monday, some themes and questions emerged from the set of posts, which I thought I'd highlight here.

1) Is it important for a blog to have an individual personality or can a group blog work to showcase an organization's personality? Here, here and here.

2) Are blogs a "technological revolution" or a "publishing revolution"? How important are human factors and culture? Here and here.

3) How do we convince leadership to blog? Many posts had lots of practical advice.

4) Is there something inherently corrupt or wrong about corporate blogging? We are being viewed with suspicion by some. And what's up with PR Ethics in general?

Author: Elizabeth Albrycht | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 1 comments
Category: @ Elizabeth Albrycht | Announcements | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Day 2: Lessons Learned

After the experience of Day 2 of Global PR Blog Week, we the editors thought we'd highlight one major point and reiterate a few things.

The major point:

The participants in Global PR Blog Week are self-selected. We simply posted an invitation on our wiki, hoping people with an interest in sharing their knowledge about PR, marketing and blogs would agree to join in our effort. Many have, and you see the results of that work here.

However, that openness of invitation rested upon the trust that people would not abuse the opportunity and use this forum as a link engine for their own businesses. Unfortunately, you will see that that trust has been abused in some of these posts.

We are sticking to our original philosophy of openness, and the posts will remain. However, this community will need to evaluate whether next year's event will be juried and invitation-only.

Related to that point, there are posts here that are only going to reinforce the negative opinion of PR people and the suspicion that we are trying to corrupt blogging. There have been some rather strongly worded comments to that effect. We leave it to you, community members and readers, to respond.

Some reiterations:

We remain astonished at the level of typos, punctuation and grammatical errors in these posts. We three editors, working nearly full time over 24 hours yesterday, simply could not keep up. Please proof your work! We are professional communicators, for goodness sake. This is totally unacceptable.

During our second day of editing, we realized that the multiple posting problem had more than one dimension, as posts with the same titles broke the extended post links. So, once again, please follow these rules:

1. No more than 3 posts should be submitted per day per author
2. Do not title those posts the same
3. Post titles should be short (4 words or so)

We decided to feature only the first 15 posts on the front page, as otherwise the page took too long to load on dial-up connections.

Finally, we entered into a discussion as to whether we should apply for a Creative Commons license, and which one to choose. We have no closure on that one, as there doesn't seem to be one for groups of multiple authors. We've posted to their licensing discussion board and will let you know the results. We'll also continue this discussion on the wiki in the near future.

Author: Elizabeth Albrycht | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: Announcements

 

Day 2 Stats

We had more than 1000 visitors Tuesday.

Our total page hits for this week so far is 2,906, with the average visit time at 6 minutes.

Page Views:

Average Per Day: 1,380
Average Per Visit: 3.3
July 13: 1,114
This Week: 9,658

Technorati: Global PR Blog Week 1.0 has 238 Links from 68 Sources

Author: Elizabeth Albrycht | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 2 comments
Category: Announcements

 

Chat schedule for July 14

Some of the authors scheduled to post on July 14 will be available for chat during their "office hours" (all hours EST):

• Elizabeth Albrycht — 4 am - 2 pm, via Yahoo! Messenger (e_albrycht)
• Angelo Fernando — 9.30 am to 12.30 pm, 2 pm to 4 pm, via MSN Messenger (heyangelo)
• Bernard Goldbach — 5 am to noon, via Yahoo! Messenger (bgoldbach)
• Alice Marshall — 10 am to 3 pm, via e-mail: marshall [at] prestovivace [dot] biz
• Anthony Parcero — 11 am - 2 pm, via AOL IM (avparcero75)

Before starting a conversation, please reach an agreement on the discussion's degree of confidentiality: is it confidential, is it blogable, would you agree to be identified by name, etc.

All the authors will respond to your comments and questions throughout the day.

Author: Administrator | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: Announcements | Topic 3 Making PR Work

 

Corporate Blogging

I think there is a lot of power in corporate blogging. It seems some think everyone has drunk the koolaid and aren't looking back. Let me try to give a realistic view.

At 800CEOREAD, our weblog is a PR tool for the company and authors we sell. We are working to be the leading information provider on business books and business book publishing. We do this through "signed" book reviews, excerpts, author visits. etc. This expertise and knowledge has our readers spending 2 to 7 minutes with our brand every day. I think that is pretty compelling.

We have two things going for us. The first is the fact that there is always new content being developed. That means there is always news to be reported. The second is a vacuum. Our blog is filling a space that many would think too small to even bother with. For us, it fits perfectly with what we do.

Author: Todd Sattersten | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 1 comments
Category: @ Todd Sattersten | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Getting blog postings into search engines

How to instantly get your business blog postings to show up in the search engines

Search engines love blogs.

Blogs tend to be frequently updated, contain fresh insights on hot topics, link to other sites, and provide resources for further topic exploration.

That's one reason why blog entries tend to predominate over regular website pages for many search topics.

There are two things that you should know to make sure that you optimize the search engine placement for your blog. First is how to write your blog entry so that it does well in the search engines. Second is how to make sure the search engines find your blog.

How To Write Blog Entries So They Rank Well In The Search Engines:

1. Before writing any blog entry that you want to use as a search engine traffic magnet, figure out what keywords you want it to be found under when people search. Most of the time you will be most successful with two word combinations or higher ("marketing strategy" rather than simply "marketing".)

2. Use your chose keyword combination frequently throughout your post. They should be in your headline, the first sentence of your copy, and around 5% of your copy throughout your posting. Don't go much higher, as you will then be penalized and won't show up at all.

3. Write good content to which people will want to link. Most search engines rely not just on the words on your page, but also the links into a given page to determine where sites rank in their results. So, if you write great stuff to which people choose to link, you'll generally do much better than writing carefully crafted, keyword-dense copy that is so bad that nobody sends links your way.

4. Write postings that are longer than normal blog entries. Search engines discount short content pages, as this is a favorite tactic of spammers. 250 words or more is ideal for placement with the search engines.

5. Structure your blog template well, with your headline as an h1 tag, your headline as your title tag, using your blog's keyword function to get your keywords placed another time on the page, etc. You may want to ask your programmer to work with your blog's template for you to optimize these factors.

How To Make Sure The Search Engines Find Your Blog Entries:

Many people think that the secret to getting listed in search engines is submitting each page to the engines on a regular basis. That practice may have worked well in the past, but now search engines give top credit to pages that they find on their own through following links. Thus, smart bloggers work hard to make sure that there are multiple links to their key blog listings:

1. When you write something great, link directly to that post from your main website using the title of the entry or better yet, your targeted keywords as the text in the link.

2. Make comments on other people's blogs, linking into your page that discusses that same topic, again, using your targeted keywords as the text in the link.

3. Use the power of RSS syndication and server side includes to pull your headlines and short excerpts into other pages on your site, such as your index page and news pages. This process gets technical, so I won't explain it here, but here's an example of a site pulling a blog's entries into their pages using RSS: Aviation News. There are several programs out there that make this possible, one of my favorites is CaRP. Tools like these can be used either to pull results in from your own blog, or from other many other news sources.

4. Submit your blog and its RSS feeds to each of the blog search engines. You can find them either by searching the web for topics like "promote your blog", "blog search engines" and "RSS feeds", or can cut the time required dramatically by picking up a copy of Blogging For Business, which contains a list of the top 50 places to promote your blog.

As you do so, and as you write a constant stream of great copy, you'll discover that your blog is not only showing up in many different search engines, but that tons of traffic are coming to your site as a result.

Finally, we promised to show you how you can instantly get your blog content into one of the top search engines.

Yahoo has a great feature in their MyYahoo service which allows you to pull the most recent posts from whatever blogs you choose and have them displayed each time you open up your myYahoo page, like this:

While this is a great way to be able to easily track posts made to the blogs that you find most interesting, it's also a great way to get Yahoo to add your entries to their index, quickly and at no cost.

Here’s the way this strategy works. Simply go to Yahoo and click the MyYahoo link close to the top of the page.

If you don't have a MyYahoo account follow their simple instructions to create one.

Once you get into your MyYahoo page, click the choose content button, then on the resulting page, click the box for RSS Headlines under the MyYahoo! Essentials header.

This will make RSS Headlines live on your MyYahoo page. Click the Edit box next to that option which will take you to a Choose Your RSS Sources page. In the top box there, put in the address to your blog amd save your results.

Now, go to your blog and make a blog posting.

Come back to your MyYahoo page and refresh it. It may take a couple of tries, but, assuming that Yahoo’s server’s not too busy at the moment, you should see the content update on your MyYahoo page, with your brand new post being pulled into your MyYahoo page.

Here’s where the cool part comes in. Calling an RSS listing into a MyYahoo page also triggers the visit of a Yahoo spider to your site, checking out any of the pages that haven't been previously indexed in their search engine.

So, in the process of pulling your RSS feed into your MyYahoo page, you've also alerted Yahoo that you have a new post, which usually means that your post will be added to their index in record time! I've seen it work in as little as 24 hours. Try it yourself and see what happens! Then watch your traffic soar...

Aren't you glad that you came today?

Author: Don Crowther | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 1 comments
Category: @ Don Crowther | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Response to External Comments

I've got a mild rebuttal to Mr. Horton's blog

No Flamethower here!

I did want to respond to your blog post, but rest assured there is no intent to flame here. I can see where you're coming from, and your misgivings are certainly valid, I'm not sure it's as bad as you fear.

What I see happening is a lot of others just like me who are thrilled to be able to have a technology that allows us to do something we've either always done, but it makes it easier, or allows others to try something new. It's still writing, though, and writing anything on a sustained, regular basis is hard work. Not everyone is up to that; witness the number of abandoned blogs. People have the odd idea that somehow the technology is going to do the writing for them, and when they discover that's not the case, they go back to whatever they were doing before, after a day, a week or month of failed attempts to create the magic they were expecting.

I don't think there will ever be a situation where everybody's writing and nobody's reading. Even with all this technology, there is still a major percentage of people who just wouldn't consider writing anything for public consumption, ever. Even some published book authors are telling me, "Oh, I don't know what I would say!"

I've been hung out to dry myself on this next one: not everybody is a writer. I made that statement of perceived broad insult to the world in general only a couple of weeks ago on a discussion group for academics (the PhD kind) and you would've thought I said schools were obsolete. Sheesh! In the real world, this statement is actually true, and hardly anyone would dispute that. With a blog, you have the added necessity to promote the thing, if you want anybody to read it. Not everybody can or will do that, either.

There have always been weird perceptions of new technologies. I don't know how old you are, but I've known people who insisted on picking up the living room and dressing up before the TV was turned on. ;>) Not many people went to that extreme, but there was a persistent notion in the early days of TV that it was somehow two-way, and the people in the studio in New York could see the people at home in Scarsdale or Kalamazoo. My mother once told me that when I was a toddler I thought Arthur Godfrey was my dad. It took a while, but eventually I figured out that wasn't true, and I knew the difference between Daddy who came home at dinnertime and the picture on television during the day.

It won't take lawsuits or anything radical to convince the general public that blogs are simply a content management technology. People will discover it themselves. There are a lot of people who still think the simple act of having a website will bring them fame and fortune. You and I know it can't, but it takes time for the rest of the world to catch up. They will.

Of course I remember the Internet bubble and the gazillions of dollars floating around on thin air. This is not the same thing. Sure, some people may think it is, as happened last winter, when I had an e-mail from a lady asking me how she could promote her blog and get a book deal. Turned out that not only was there no book, this lady didn't fully understand she'd need to write one. She expected somehow having a book deal meant that a publisher recognized your life or your ideas were so wonderful and charming they would come and bring writing people, and the whole thing would be lovely, and she'd get to be on TV and make millions of dollars. Ah, yep.

The only thing I can't get my head around from your post is why you think all these bloggers need an editor. They're not all for general public consumption, if you didn't know that. (There is no insult intended here; I just figure maybe you don't have the whole picture yet.) Even on the professional level, who is to know if the editor knows any better than the writer?

For example, I just finished reading a hardcover book I checked out from my library. It was entitled, And That's the Way IT Will Be. Subtitled, News and Information in a Digital World. Publisher, New York University Press. The copyright date is 1998. I love reading these old computer books, because they're often unintentionally hilarious. I'm sure your local library has a good collection of these. The problem with this book was the fact that the editor was apparently sleeping on the job. Each page has one or more typographic errors, in addition to frequent grammar and spelling mistakes.

This is indicative of the quality of hard-copy books available today. It's one reason why I stopped buying books. There are very few books that have been produced with no errors, either hard-copy or e-published form. Making books right is their job; but they aren't doing it. Same applies to periodicals. If you have occasion to read a small local newspaper or weekly, they often look like the product of Mrs. Ardisana's Sixth Grade Class.

As a reader and customer, it looks to me that editors just don't. They may be filtering or something for tone, or accordance with the publications standards, but there isn't much I've seen in editing for quality. I can safely say I haven't seen one book that was published without errors of some kind in about ten years.

Even so, there have always been publications of dubious value, no matter the technology used to produce them. I think we're in a shakedown period, and those blogs of value to a number of people will succeed and be widely read. There will be some that have a small, highly focused audience. Some will be reserved for an audience of one or two, not intended for public viewing.

We can't presume any intention for all of the blogs; any more than we can presume the same intention for all of those who have cars. Some people will go to the beach; others will use the car to drive to work. The difference between cars and blogs is that we know what cars are capable of; we don't yet know that about blogs.

Author: Trudy W. Schuett | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 3 comments
Category: @ Trudy W. Schuett

 

Blogging For More Sales, To Influence the Media and Show Your Expertise

So it's almost the end of the 4th quarter, and you're really not quite sure whether or not your company's going to come out a winner when it comes to earnings, or perhaps you're a single salesperson in a company that makes you at least meet your monthly quota, but for some reason people just aren't buying.

Why aren't they buying? Well, perhaps you have a useless product or service, or perhaps you just haven't educated them enough about it, other than your sales pitch, which people are rather sick of hearing. Pitching doesn't sell things, anyway. Not anymore. Nope. People are consciously tuning your ads out, too. What's going on?

Throughout the 20th century information became abundant. People only became dependent upon salespeople to make the actual purchase, or transaction, as we call it in my business. This, of course, is one of the value-points of PR, and people do tend to rely on articles they read about a product or service more than they do what an actual salesperson says, unless you play the advisory salesperson role, which I often do.

People are smart. They like to make their own decisions. They do not like, nor will they allow anyone to make them feel as if they were manipulated, whether by a sales pitch or an advertisement. So the modern salesperson should also play the information distributor-broker, gatekeeper and salesperson role. This is where blogs come in.

Having successfully blogged for sales, I can tell you that they provide salespeople the following benefits:

(1) The open showing of product (and area, in my case) knowledge to clients and prospective clients, or prospective buyers.

(2) The ability to keep your "pipeline" full, simply by typing a few keystrokes and updating daily, or even weekly (this is how I remain No. 2 in Real Estate Popular and in Google's top 5 for certain keywords, and I pay $0 for Search Engine Optimization because the blogs I contribute to increase my ranking automatically). A blog allows you to link to your website within each post, automatically providing you higher search engine rankings. Your blog will automatically be highly ranked by most search engines, simply because they're able to be updated more often than say, your company website.

This will only prove successful if you use an automated lead gathering source, which should also be placed in your company website so salespeople can follow up with potential purchasers. Various real estate companies have included automated systems to generate leads for their agents, and quite successfully, but combining blogs with an automated lead generating system could also benefit numerous pharmaceutical companies, which more often than not compete with non-pharma companies for Internet sales (Viagra, Cialis Valium and many others can be found marketed by non-pharma-sanctioned sellers on the Internet, often at prices disallowing much if any profit to the companies making them). Some technology companies could also benefit. Here are a few who I would advise to use blogging in order to increase their sales numbers:

1. Tech Data - The world's second largest global distributor of electronic computer equipment could make its sales force both more efficient and increase its volume by implementing blogs into its sales and marketing strategy. Steve Raymund, blogging could increase your company's sales.

2. DELL - I think it's high-time that DELL CEO Michael Dell got a blog. By blogging regularly, people would contstantly stay tuned in, and when people are constantly attuned to your blog it's much easier to pitch your computers to them. After all, they've tuned into to your blog for weeks, so a simple mention without a pitch involved doesn't look like a sales pitch, but your sales sure do go up when you're blogging to a regular audience. I would even bet that people who buy their first DELL tune into Michael Dell's blog (if he does make one) and continue to buy DELL's because through the blog, Dell would be directly communicating with them. DELL could also give blogs to customers as a promotion, or a co-branding venture. Dude, get a blog!

3. Cars.com - Cars.com could use a blog to constantly communicate with prospective buyers and provide them with updated information that they can't get anywhere else. That way it allows the company to build brand wareness while providing their potential customers with free information, so when it comes time to purchase a car, Cars.com would have already earned their trust, and they can search for cars anytime by the search tool implemented into your blog after it's created, assuming Cars.com does create one.

Any company with an Internet presence with lead generating or e-commerce tools will more often than not benefit from a blog. Why?

Blogs provide a constant source of information, so you can, in a sense, become the expert that people used to depend on newspaper columnists and salespeople to be, but many of them now often read the columnists, as well as five to nine blogs daily. Most professionals are experts in their field, so getting a blog simply allows a professional person, sales or otherwise, to showcase their expertise to the world.

Bill Gates, who is rumored to be getting a blog soon, has come to realize this rather self-evident truth. Blogs can easily make a CEO an expert because of two things: A CEO's expertise and the newspaper column likeness of a blog. This makes it easy for CEOs to communicate with three stakeholders: (1) The media, (2) Company shareholders and (3) Current and potential customers.

I track my blog visitors daily, and there are instances when St. Petersburg Times staff writers have visited, just days before a similar newspaper story to my blog posts was published in the Times. Journalists often get story ideas from blogs, and sometimes blogs themselves become stories.

Of course, with a blog you can also become part of the media landscape. Take Hundred Acres, for example. Its contributing writers are real estate agents and bloggers, but the posts typically read like brief news or magazine articles. Some bloggers are also selling ads using their blogs, Nick Denton's Gawker being one of the most successful ones. Hundreds of thousands of people flock to Gawker daily. What if a CEO received that kind of attention?

Then he, or she, would have to have a blog. CEOs can easily and inexpensively create brand awareness, show their expertise to the world and retain customer and stockholder satisfaction, on top of communicating regularly with the media, all with a blog. Publishing a book is still optional, but not always as necessary, because blogs often tell the stories of our lives, and those often are the most interesting to read.

Author: John Mudd | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 3 comments
Category: @ John Mudd | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

How to launch a corporate blog for a professional services organization

Traditionally, branding is associated with physical products and consumer packaged goods. But branding has become a crucial part of business for the service industry, which today employs more people than all other industries combined. And mergers and acquisitions in combination with global deregulation has seen the rise of many powerful global brands in the service industry. Financial services has been in the forefront of this development and four of the 30 most valuable brands (according to Interbrand) in the world are financial services brands (Citibank, American Express, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch).

Branding is increasingly important for professional services companies for several reasons. You cannot store a service, it is consumed at the same time as it is produced. If you are going to buy a new digital camera, you can go to the store and look at it, feel it and try it out before you buy. You can’t do that with a service which means that your impressions of the brand are extremely important. You buy a service on trust: this brand will best fulfill my expectations.

Services are also hard to show. How do you illustrate management consulting?

In a professional services company, like a law firm, a PR agency or a management consultancy, you sell competence. The most important and most expensive asset is your employees. Since services are hard to illustrate, much of the brand is built in the meeting between your employees and the customers. And the more frequent and qualitative conversation you have with your clients, the better. Corporate blogs can play a vital part of that conversation.

We can assume that the harder it is to evaluate a service before it is bought, the more important it is that the customer has favorable associations to the brand. And the more knowledge-intensive and less standardized the service is, the harder it is for a customer to evaluate the service prior to purchase. It might be easier to evaluate a cleaning company than a PR agency. Another factor is the risk involved in the purchase. The higher the risk, the more importance is placed on the brand.

Few things are more effective in marketing a professional services company than establishing experts or thought leaders who act as speakers at seminars, get publicity when quoted in media and in general act as the face of the brand. And one of the most obvious advantages of corporate blogs is that they fairly quickly can build industry experts and corporate stars. That said, it should be clear that professional services brands are among those that can benefit most from starting corporate blogs.

Corporate blogs can help professional services companies, well, any company, to improve different aspects of its communications, not just in brand building. Before starting a blog, ask yourself:

What areas of communication needs improvement in your organization (some examples)?

External communication
* Brand awareness/Brand positioning
* Business development
* Issues management/lobbying
* Crisis communication
* Media relations
* Recruitment marketing
* Customer support
* Reseller/dealer support
* Community relations

Internal communication
* Knowledge management
* Sales support
* Project communication

I have researched as many case studies and articles about corporate blogging as possible during the last months in order to list some of the arguments why blogs should belong in the arsenal of the marketing departement.

External communication

Brand awareness/Brand positioning

- Build awareness of the company and the nature of its business.
- Change the positioning of your brand.
- Influence the influencers - "Nike is talking to the right people -- instead of the most people -- who happen to be the influencers".
- Market your expertise - "As with conventional publishing, bloggers get their names out there and can carve out niches as experts."
- Improve search engine ranking. A few days after the Stockholm Spectator had an article about plagiarism at Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter, 5 of the 10 first results of the journalists name in Google came from blogs.
- Drive traffic to your company web page. New content makes readers come back, and the effect will spill over to your corporate web site, which probably is not updated as often.
- Reach new audiences. RSS and news aggregators allow people to ”subscribe” to words or phrases which in turn makes it possible for your messages to find new audiences.

Business development

- Launch a product or service - "Oxygen Media launched a blog to promote its new show Good Girls Don't."
- Gain new clients. "Today's "tech-friendly" (law) students will become tomorrow's corporate counsels. Indeed, the idea that these students will ignore technology and revert to paper-driven processes becomes the increasingly ridiculous conclusion. More specifically ... these decision makers of tomorrow may also immediately think of the web as a logical place to start looking for a lawyer."

Issues management/lobbying

- Many politicians use blogs for opinion building. Organizations and corporations can too.

Crisis communication

- I have yet not met a PR Manager that honestly can say that he quickly can post messages on the company web site himself on a Saturday afternoon, without having to call some site owner in a central position within the company. A crisis blog could be a quick way to post information in times of crisis, from remote places and on odd hours.

Media relations

- Companies are beginning to experiment with sending press releases via RSS. Predictions are that journalists will start using news aggregators and RSS readers to avoid being dependent on a mail box full of spam. So far, we have no indications that this actually works, rather we can see that the news stories sent out via RSS are being picked up by bloggers who spread the news. For example, the 8 press releases distributed by Apple via RSS between June 8 and June 23, 2004, were all picked up by blogs. In the Bloglines monitoring system, all press releases were picked up, the most popular one with 15 references (certainly more bloggers wrote about the topics without posting a direct link)

Recruitment marketing

- Today's students are more used to finding information online, and via blogs, and they will become tomorrow's employees (and clients, competitors etc).

Customer support

- RSS can replace email as communications channel. The number of e-mail newsletters is increasing, so is spam. Many newsletters get caught in the spam filters. Syndicating your communication via RSS can be more effective, or at least as a support to the regular newsletters. "At the height of the spread of the Sobig.F virus (...), PaidContent.org publisher Rafat Ali suspended publication of his daily e-mail newsletter and opted for an RSS version instead."

Reseller/dealer support

- Blogs can be used to distribute information about new campaigns, new products, FAQs, to your resellers and dealers.

Community relations

- To engage in a more direct conversation with customers, users, developers, employees etc. “Sun sees its Blogs.sun.com web site as a possible model for a new type of grassroots corporate communication.”

Internal communication

- Motivate present employees. Lets them show their expertise.
- Encourages dialogue, in contrast to ordinary top-down "weekly newsletters from the boss".

Knowledge management

- Act as a learning tool internally.
- Blogs as research tool. Feeds offer an efficient and inexpensive means to notify a large audience of a research question or need.

Sales support

- Competetive intelligence. "Information about new campaigns or new products. Verizon is reportedly using commercial blog technology within its competitive intelligence and market research group."

Project communication

- Improve information sharing within projects. The Navy’s eBusiness Operations Office is using blogs to improve information sharing for program managers, project experts, contractors, sponsors, and war-fighters.

Now that you have the arguments for starting a corporate blog I will share some thoughts on how to get started. Since I am in the starting phase of launching a corporate blog for the law firm I am working for, this corporate blog roadmap is written with the eyes of a PR practitioner in a global professional services firm, but can certainly be useful for most organizations. My top priority with a blog is to build brand recognition and promote experts in different fields of law, so if your purpose differs, there might be other factors to consider.

But first we must distinguish between
- Corporate blog: an official blog from a company, which signals that the blog is an official communications channel for the company
- Employee blog: a blog run by one or several employees of a company, with or without the endorsement of the company, about the company or business related to it

How to start a corporate blog:

1. Identify what area of communications you want to improve.
2. Choose to start a corporate blog or to encourage an employee blog.
3. Should you start a group blog or an individual blog?
4. What geographic area should the blog cover (global or should one country begin as a trial project?) and what language should you use (if you start in one country and think of replicating to more countries, should you have all in English or should they be local)
5. Company wide blog or blog per practice group, market unit, product group, industry sector?
6. Find evangelists who are good communicators and willing to spend the time posting on the blog.
7. Get the accept from your CEO or whoever has the final say.
8. Create an editorial policy about who gets to blog, tone of voice, areas to cover, length and frequency of posts, information sources to cover, copyright aspects, target audience, do’s and dont’s.
9. Get accept from your IT department. They will worry about security and the risks of having several individuals post information live on a website. Get their help in selecting admin software and setting up the blog, domain, RSS feeds and tracking/measurement capabilities.
10. Create a corporate blog with the correct graphic profile according to your brand guidelines. Include biographies and photos of the bloggers.
11. Create an extensive list of information sources for the bloggers to cover in order to get information to comment on. Include official news sources, media, other blogs, press releases etc.
12. Give your bloggers access to a news aggregator so that they get the feel of RSS feeds and how it works.
13. Give your bloggers a list of blogs to read. Most people are not used to reading blogs and need to become familiar with blogging style writing and netiquette (linking policies etc).
14. Allow a trial period for some weeks, to be able to fine tune and make adjustments.
15. Start an RSS-feed and make the blog public.
16. Begin marketing your blog. List the blog in blog directories.
Link to the blog in your email signature and from your corporate webpage. Tell your customers and your employees. Don’t send out a press release about it, to get credit let blogs market your blog.
17. Evaluate, adjust and evaluate again.

Corporate blogs are not a universal solution to all communications problems, but used correctly they can be a perfect tool to improve external or internal communications. Law firms in the US have come a long way in using blogs, or "blawgs" as a tool for branding. Many other professional services firms will follow in their footsteps.

Footnote: Since I am offline for the first part of this week, I will not be able to answer questions or comments until Friday.

Author: Hans Kullin | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 3 comments
Category: @ Hans Kullin | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Constructive Bridges

[Note: This posting aggregates three separate postings: Constructing Bridges, Continuous Mindshare, and Interactive Engagement.]

Constructing Bridges

Many blogs "preach to the choir." This has quite a lot of value as well in terms of inspiring and rallying converted constituents.

But your intent is evangelism, then your intent is to convert the unconverted...the unwashed masses (i.e. they've never heard of you or your ideas). This is a much more ambitious task.

As I write this, I realize just how big a topic this idea alone is. It's about bridge building, often between two cultures. It's about change management as well.

It's important to understand the status quo and what would motivate change. And it's important to show respect for those that still are skeptical of your message or its underlying intent and talk to them in their language. Typically dialogue is accomplished through respect for values and tapping into universal and common desires and motives rather than bashing the idiocy of the current system. Those that are still invested in the current system aren't going to listen to an attack on something they're heavily invested.

There are certainly areas in technology that result in polarization. But as an evangelist you want to understand the reasons (the objections to your message) behind polarization more than you want to join in the crusade.

For instance, in my "agile software development" and "agile project management" example, it is not simply enough to highlight pro-agile stances around bigger-picture contextual references. Unless your "big picture" also includes looking at the reasons why heavy weight methodologies (often cited as the "opposite" of lightweight methodologies that are encompassed by agile techniques) such as CMM and often, RUP, are popular and have been in use for a long time in the industry. In the areas of agile project management, one couldn't ignore the prevalence of the Project Management Institute (PMI), its traction, its message and its certification process. You have to understand the mindset of the heavyweight methodology proponent. You have to understand its strengths.

Your best best for conversion would start with those potential readers that are using the methodology just because that's all they know of - but they are aware of its limitations in particular cases and situations of software development and open to new solutions. It's important to show respect and understanding (both will strengthen your arguments and reasoning) and resist creating a religious war.

And don't underestimate the power of inertia. Typically a product/service benefit must be 10 times better than the current solution to justify a switch in most customer's minds. An example of the power of the inertia is the fact that most corporations won't budge from using the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser even with its multitude of security concerns - what it has going for it is "ubiquity and inertia." Powerful forces indeed. Typically if you are "selling change" - which is typically WHY evangelism is needed - you cannot ignore this fact.

Continuous Mindshare

What is different is that the blog allows for constant communication. If people read the blog every day, they are spending two to seven minutes with us every day. Mailers get thrown away and email get deleted. RSS allows the posts to be delivered to them and they can opt-out at any time. Blogging by its nature is more personal than other marketing communication. I think that strikes a chord with people. (Todd Satterson's interview on 800-CEO-READ blog via CorporateBlogging.info)

Imagine that the audience you want to reach is spending a few minutes with your blog every day (assuming you are updating that frequently). Now that's continuous mindshare. And that's the beauty of blogs. You don't have to wait and hope that the trade press will pick it up…you have a continuous direct conduit to your audience, many of them whom are connected influencers as well.

But continuous mindshare is not a given because you've thrown together a blog. No "build it and they will subscribe." You have to proactively build and grow an audience that anxiously anticipates your next post.

Enticing and encouraging new visitors to subscribe in the first place is necessary. Make the RSS feed easy to find and, depending on the market and your objectives, offer an email subscription if the RSS feed would be a hurdle.

Getting a visitor to your blog site once is not enough. Good intentions to visit again are simple to forget - if you've gotten them to the blog initially and they're interested, encourage subscription there and then.

To keep that continuous mindshare, it's important to post frequently - I know that for many corporations this may realistically occur only 1-2 times a week (and that's really the minimum). If you want to accelerate your success - post every day - yes, each and every day. Make it a daily habit for your readers to look forward to reading your blog.

Immediacy is also important here. Immediacy means respond to direct feedback, comments, or interesting and compelling 3rd party blog posts within 24-36 hours. Otherwise, you often miss the window of opportunity especially in heated debates - the conversation has ebbed and flowed into another topic (that's the A.D.D. nature of the blogosphere). Did you know Technorati doesn't even bother to report results on any topic older than 7 days? The blogosphere is also affectionately known as the World Live Web or the Living Web.

And don't sing the same old refrain over and over like a broken record. Imagine you had to read this stuff every day. I'm not going to mention names, but some blogs have gotten to be way too predicable. You know exactly what their opinion is and what they're going to say. Some consistency around your objectives is required but keep it at a high level. The posts themselves should strike to be fresh, compelling and even surprising. Try taking a different tack or arriving from a new angle, point to new offbeat links, and just be counterintuitive once in a while to sustain interest and avoid staleness. Evolve your message and keep your audience coming back.

Interactive Engagement

Richard Schreuer of marketing research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey talked about how to measure the impact of advocacy. According to their data, advocates tend to recommend products to an average of 6 other people. They've also found that receiving a recommendation on a product increases purchase intent by an average of 6%. So by combining the number of people who say they will recommend a product with the estimated increased purchase intent, you can estimate the financial impact of advocacy. (via Decent Marketing)

While advocates, or customer evangelists, is one of the goals of corporate evangelism, companies must be prepared for the fact that they don't control a conversation.

The shift from crafted unilateral (outbound) messages from corporate to the public to a more authentic, interactive participatory exchange is certainly new for PR and, even more so, for corporations.

The shift implies listening, not just talking. And a continuous feedback loop.

You don't always initiate the conversation, either. Fast Company magazine's restrictive linking policy came under the ire of Boing Boing - one of the most popular blogs - and quickly spread through the Internet:

FastCompany -- the tech magazine for the new economy -- has a spectacularily clueless policy on linking...

As far as lessons learned, Fast Company replied:

This is an instructive example of some of the challenges and opportunities that can arise as more organizations -- not just individuals -- begin blogging. With increased visibility and transparency comes interactivity and responsibility. And if you ever have a question, want to share an idea, or need to clarify something, don't hesitate to contact me directly.

On corporate blogging, Ross Mayfield muses:

Whether large scale adoption of corporate blogging will occur outside tech because of control has less to do with characteristics of industries than leadership. It happens first in information intensive industries, but can happen anywhere a manager wants to gain competitive advantage and is willing not just to give up some control, but recognize its already lost.

Assuming one can be comfortable with the knowledge that conversations are already occuring and control is often an illusion, how do you leverage engagement with interested parties?

A comment by a a Sun blogger on DivaBlog asserts that what's more typical is that no conversations around your company and its products and services is occuring:

The idea of a conversation is great, but what's difficult is to engage the dialog, to connect the other on the discussion thread.

Engagement occurs not just at the final sales delivery channel - to gain advocates for already finished product - but much earlier - during the conception and design phases of products and services. Iterative (for each new and improved version) and interactive engagement is a feedback loop through the entire lifecycle of the product including the earliest embryonic stages. Customers become stakeholders. When customers have a role beyond that of 'consumer' they will engage. Blogs can assist in connecting to the desires, dreams, and wants of the market and to gather that feedback. The product itself is always the primary message. Effort placed on building a buzz-worthy product simplifies evangelist's role.

Author: Evelyn Rodriguez | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 1 comments
Category: @ Evelyn Rodriguez | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Thought Leadership, Evangelism in Blogs

[Note: This posting aggregates three separate postings: Thought Leadership, Evangelism in Blogs, Creative Passion, and Contextual Relevance.]

Thought Leadership, Evangelism in Blogs

Almost everyone, even personal blogs, are 'evangelizing' something - whether that is their favorite presidential candidate, the strategic value of enterprise I.T., or their love of knitting.

Let's say that your company or a client is interested in either starting their own corporate blog or 'pitching' ideas to the blogosphere (the collective virtual space inhabited by bloggers).

A common perception among those new to blogs are that they are frequently updated websites and thus follow the general guidelines for website content that most professionals are familiar with. While blogging software may be used for purposes of website content management, I'm using a more specific definition that aligns with the top 6 characteristics of blogs outlined at CorporateBlogging.info - namely, Personality, Voice, The Links, Conversations, Frequency, Feed.

There are five factors to consider for success with a corporate blog that is used primarily for evangelism and thought leadership as I defined those terms in my Q&A.

These factors will be discussed in greater detail in subsequent posts:

1. Creative Passion
2. Contextual Relevance
3. Constructing Bridges
3. Continuous Mindshare
4. Iterative Engagement

In addition, it's important to remember these points as well.

1. Your product/service is the primary message; it needs to be a story that begs to be told.
2. You are the message.
3. You don't always initiate the conversation.

Creative Passion

I outlined the importance of passion fairly well in a previous post. I'd like to highlight and expand on a few points made in that post. Blogging can be fun or it can be a tedious unrelenting chore.

You're not going to have much luck forcing employees to blog, even if it is part of their job description, if they don't have the desire to do so. I'm a big stickler for authenticity so I'll be honest here. I optimistically thought (even with the to-do list I had going) that I'd whip out these posts before I headed out on vacation to Ireland. But alas, I find myself sitting in an Internet café in Dublin because I made a commitment to participate in Global PR Blog Week. Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is incredible and it's an honor to participate, but under the circumstances right this moment - yes, I wish my vacation started a week out and I'd rather be strolling amongst the monastery ruins and lakes nestled in the Glendalough valley instead of staring at my laptop in a windowless basement.

That is not the frame of mind that you want employees to be writing from - sure, there will be a few posts where their heart isn't in it - but that should be the rare exception not the rule.

Why am I stressing this so hard?

• Blogs get abandoned quite frequently due to burn out, lack of interest, why am I doing this onerous obligation soul-searching and related reasons. I've abandoned one blog myself because the topic was too constrained for me and it ultimately felt like an albatross hung around my neck. Next time around it's fun. Most people underestimate the time and effort required to sustain a good blog. The only way the project is going to be ongoing is to make sure that enthusiasm doesn't wane. How do you do that? Tap into some aspect of your product/service that your authors and audience are enthused about. Employees will be blogging in their off hours if it's fun for them. Edwin K., the primary author of the Collaxa blog, actually used the words "fun" in describing his 2 and 1/2 years thus far of evangelizing the business process management and BPEL space. Fun, passion, challenge, enthusiasm: It's the only way the commitment will be maintained.
• You're competing for attention. There are over 3 million - amazing! - blogs tracked by Technorati now…god knows, there are plenty of bloggers that don't know to ping Technorati and are thus uncounted. For the majority of bloggers, this is a personal labor of love. They're not paid to write and in fact, their hobby takes hosting dollars in addition to their time and effort. Their motivation springs from love of something and it comes across in their writing. Your blog will be competing with those interesting, compelling voices for a share of the time folks devote to their blog reading habit. I was taking a random jaunt at Bloglines (if you are a user, you can see how many subscriptions others have) and I was surprised by how few blogs most people are subscribed to compared to my 300+. http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?id=evelynr" At this point, I am loathe to add any new blog to my roster - I'm already too overwhelmed. Bottom line: If you want to compete, your blog must also be interesting and compelling. (Even more so if the topic is already being covered fairly well.) The best way to achieve this is that the authors are jazzed about writing.

This passion factor is one reason that I advocate that each author have their own blog. The sense of ownership created by having your own space - a 'room of one's own' - spurs the author on and gives her the drive to create and build up their own body of work and their own audience.

With team blogs, it's easier to feel that if you don't post for a bit maybe someone else will pick up the slack. It's also a bit harder with team blogs to impart an individual personality and voice as well as engender a deep sense of ownership. For additional perceived authenticity and credibility (and perhaps to avoid legal ramifications), I even advocate having each individual blog hosted outside of the company domain.

Contextual Relevance

Your blog isn't for you - it's for your readers. You're looking for a match between your interests and what's relevant to your target reader in their context. Make certain you have a target reader in mind and an objective for your corporate blog. You've got to search for the 'bigger context' around your topic - the topic you're evangelizing or establishing thought leadership around.

I can probably best describe this through examples.

Before I leap into examples, I would caution technology companies in particular not to solely evangelize "the blue-sky future." In this industry, we tend to (at least I know I do) want to project out 5-10 years (or more) to where the world is headed. While that makes for fascinating reading and fun researching and writing, if it's the only timeframe you're discussing it will be harder to maintain a wider readership beyond futurists.

Relevance means just that - in your readers' mind they are wondering, what's in it for me? Everyone is aware they need to think long-term but I'd balance this with short-term "what's in it for me right now" views. Lay out your product roadmap from your current in production version out as far as you can and map your posts to balance between the present, the short-term 6-18 months and the blue-sky view of where your customer's world is headed.

When the Pivia Software blog started the objective was to reach influencers and blog readers such as press, analysts, and venture capitalists as we weren't certain how much of our customer base was reading blogs. So that was Step 0, knowing your objectives and readership.

Step 1 is choosing the overall theme for the blog. We did a little informal 'research' on the most popular blog search engines to determine which topics were already showing up in "conversations" in the blogosphere. On one hand, you probably don't want to blog on a subject that is oversubscribed. (Recommend: Positioning) And if it is oversubcribed, you will have to find your own niche to differentiate among the crowd. We probably don't need yet another generic social software blog, for instance.

I was looking for a topic area that matched Pivia's software and market strategy as well as a topic area that had at least a little traction among current blog readers. It's easier for a new blog to break ground and gain readers if there at least a few other blogs it can link to covering similar and adjacent areas of interest.

Now, that's a Catch-22 if you're evangelizing a new concept - you're not going to find much in the way of current conversation. There's not going to be buzz around it…because, duh, it's new. It's so new, you may have even invented it. I remember clearly when Java didn't exist at all. Sun Microsystems put a lot of effort (pre-blogosphere) to educate the industry, build buzz and establish third-party fervor for the new language. So, at some point, new concepts, new technologies, new standards, new markets will be "unfindable". What then?

At Pivia we searched on terms like "application performance" or "application delivery" over a period of a few weeks - nothing. I had personally followed blogs for quite some time, but since I emphasized other technology interests it had been over 18 months since I tracked enterprise software or networking technologies. We extended the search to adjacent areas. Unfortunately, some of the adjacent areas are difficult to track due to their generality and commonality such as "user experience" or "Web applications" or "distributed enterprise" (and many blog search engines could stand to be beefed up). We also did research to determine the most influential blogs that covered enterprise software and networking topics. I checked whether press and/or analysts in the general enterprise software and networking areas had their own blogs.

Basically, I was looking for topics that already were discussed from time to time in the blogosphere to "hook" into and to kick start the blog into gear. These are also great indicators as to what people care about and are finding worthy enough to talk about.

Currently, the Pivia blog is titled Performance Matters for various reasons. It ties into their tagline "Because Performance Matters" but more importantly because it also it has broad connotations - the blog will discuss matters related to performance - and that can extend beyond just Web application performance - to the performance of your employees. Be careful when choosing a theme not too box yourself too narrowly - you never know where you might take your product direction.

A hypothetical example (no Kodak doesn't have a blog) is that Kodak's blog would be better served being about the general topic of memories and its related topics such as preserving a Kodak moment rather than specifically about developing film. If Kodak had several bloggers, then each one could focus in on niches around the broad theme and in that case, you could have one blogger focused on high-end photography for the professional geeks.

Another example. I'm passionate about "agile software development" as a methodology for software development - it's something that I'd love to evangelize. A quick search over two weeks showed that there is some conversation in the blogosphere but not a lot around that specific search topic.

And don't even attempt searching "software development" - that's an overloaded term and oversubscribed. At first glance, due to the sparse results from "agile software development" it might appear that it would take a lot of work to build up buzz and conversation around that topic, but a general understanding of the demographics of the blogosphere and knowing that the topic is being evangelized heavily offline in addition to by press and analysts would give me the confidence to start a blog specifically on this topic. My friends evangelizing agile project management may take longer to build buzz as more developers than managers are bloggers and familiar with agile software development, but there are ways to use current buzzworthy topics and add relevance to them.

Step 2 is choosing individual post topics. Continuing on the agile project management theme, authors (or an assigned market researcher) would need to be scouring blogs, events/conferences, press and analyst reports for relevant ideas. The trick is to think broadly and see the implications and patterns between two topics. For instance, a blog post by a 3rd party about the failure rate of new product launches could serve as a great launching pad for a discussion on why and how agile project management practices help ensure successful product launches (Curious? A biggie is collaborative feedback with customers). A 3rd party post on the difficulty of coordinating offshore software development resources could trigger a post on how teams are organized and projects managed using agile methodology.

You may have to just get creative after a while. For instance, it was hard for me to automate the process of finding relevant topics for Pivia. Lately, we're focusing on broad areas (for instance, the distributed enterprise trend, and the use of the Web as an application delivery platform) that are difficult to "Feedsterize". I hit upon an indirect tactic: I used the term "latency" (a term that doesn't result in 100,000 hits but is still quite relevant) as a way to automate some appropriate posts that could serve as fodder for posts for Pivia authors.

However, it is still vitally important to read the most influential bloggers and press to make sure you can jump into a current heated - and revelant - conversation while the iron is hot. Usually there are a few folks in each company that seem to read up more than others, it's helpful if those persons could pass along links to blog authors as well. (In fact, they should be bloggers themselves - as often the best bloggers are the most well-read!)

Of late, we've toyed with expanding the focus of the Pivia blog (perhaps as a temporary six-month intensive series) on all matters related to the distributed enterprise, especially around remote and mobile employees. This means we'd tackle topics that aren't even necessarily technological whatsoever but encompass (relevant to the end-customer) business and management issues related to distributed offices and the extended enterprise as well.

The art of contextual relevance is like art - knowing what to pull in, emphasize from the whole spectrum of reality and what to drop - and emphasizing what universally resonates with your core reader.

The best haiku have metaphorical power, because the concrete observation which is the subject has wider resonance. In this sense the haiku poet is like a great photographer: the art is in the selection. One could photograph everything and anything, but only those images that catch a universal significance, that show some balance of forces, are worth publishing. - Source here

Author: Evelyn Rodriguez | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 2 comments
Category: @ Evelyn Rodriguez | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Perfectionism, Identity and Blogs

One thing I've noted both first-hand and witnessing other bloggers initiating into the world of corporate blogs is the effect that authorship - a by-line - has to create an online identity. This is a vital component of the successful blogs - personality and voice - and an important differentiator to what make blogs distinct from much other media (and share more similarities with syndicated columnists or talk show hosts).

The other side of the coin is that people tend to take their blog posts too seriously. What do I mean?

When I started blogging I would re-read and re-write my posts several times; double-check spelling and all the links and quotes. And if I wasn't feeling particularly "on", I'd avoid writing altogether. I've seen corporate bloggers do the same thing - often to the nth degree. Seeing your name in print - associated with an article you wrote - for posterity (or at least a very long time with permalinks) can be a little intimidating. It's your reputation, your credibility at stake - the post becomes an extension of yourself and what you represent. Perceived external expectations for quality can keep one sharp and focused…or they can lead to stress and potentially burn out. However, for the most part these expectations for perfectionism are internally created.

A blog post will never be perfect. There is no time for perfection; while a professional writer rewrites their story several times (7-10 times for published non-fiction) and has the benefit of professional editorial review and copy-editing…a blog should never have that level of scrutiny or you're probably missing the boat on getting your message out in a timely manner. And thus, the post will always appear to come up short - at least according to the author - compared to the ideal post in their mind's eye. Nope, it may not be good enough to publish in Time Magazine.

Eventually what I see is the pressure is too much. Blog posts trail off because they're too much work - at least in order to meet our lofty expectations. This is particularly an issue with corporate blogs - where the standards appear even higher than for personal blogs.

It's important to explain to corporate bloggers they will be forgiven for a few mistakes, a few typos, a few unremarkable posts - freshness, rawness, intensity, frequency and immediacy are much more highly valued qualities in the blogosphere. A huge shift in thinking for most of us.

Myself included.

Again, my identity (appears) to be at stake.

For a blogger, there will never be no shortage of reasons why it's not the ideal, perfect post.

If you've done any amount of writing two factors to effortless writing may have been stumbled upon. 1) Being in touch with your "muse" and 2) writing uncensored, unfiltered from that place of connection - that is the rich soil that the authentic voice emerges from. Blogs are more about raw but precious gemstones than countless rewrites and continuous polishing for a flawless jewel.

And most importantly, stopping short of 100% completeness, wholeness and perfection leaves room for your audience to engage, collaborate, and add to the work. I hope you know that these posts are merely works in progress and not completed masterpieces.

I invite you to take up your own brush to the canvas...either in the comments or on your own blog or in your own private thoughts.

Author: Evelyn Rodriguez | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Evelyn Rodriguez | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Thoughts on Thought Leadership

I'm a big fan of the book "Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces" (see my review here and follow-up here) and found it invaluable in terms of its view of thought leadership and establishing momentum for 'digital products' - that's a broader view than just software companies - it actually encompasses any company with a significant online or digital component. And it's also one of the few books that speaks to 'branding' for B2B companies. If I knew everyone that were reading these posts was coming from that frame of reference, I'd use it as a basis to launch into how to apply Momentum concepts via blogs. But since I doubt that's the case, I'll just share a few tidbits related to thought leadership, which they define also as 'conceptual innovation' or perhaps these days meme creation.

The most important points are that it's crucial to focus on what's relevant to the customers' or readers' world not yours, that ideas not the molecules move customers, and to be as forward-thinking (read: bold) as possible.

My opinion is that Momentum stresses the CEO as the 'personality' too heavily as a key factor to building "momentum" behind a company. Perhaps the idea of personality itself is the key takeaway. Personality and voice are key components of any blog. (The book was published before corporate blogging came on the scene.)

In their view, the CEO is a human face that the public can latch onto. In the snippets below, when the books' authors speak about "scaling the CEO" - you are probably thinking that blogs are a perfect way to do that. Employees should be well-versed (and engaged) in the corporate vision and longer-term road map anyway for their day-to-day jobs and now they also can be the holders and messenagers of the vision.

"The NC [network computer] wasn't the first time [Oracle CEO, Larry] Ellison created news and piqued customer interest by providing a compelling context for, and putting a human face on, a confluence of market forces."

"The personal passion, market insight, and hyperbole of Ellison's view of the opportunities created by the media server and the NC gave them a "bet-the-company" feel."

"In some important way, the media server and the NC succeeded in building customers' belief that Oracle was the right choice for them, even as their strategic technology choices were still evolving in the post-IBM computing world. Ironically, the demise of the media server and the NC validated Oracle's position in customers' minds as the company with the product strategy most likely to overcome whatever future challenges might be required of database technology -- the exact predicament these same customers hoped to avoid by choosing Oracle."

"Clearly Ellison understood how to draw attention to himself and his company by moving beyond simple product announcements. Ellison did two things particularly well in his role as industry visionary. First, he aligned the underlying technology trends of the information technology industry and positioned them as powerful market forces made up of products and companies with a common enemy: Microsoft. Second, he personalized the concepts in ways virtually anyone could understand. In this way, he intuitively grasped, before many of his
contemporaries did, that customers would ultimately reward him for taking risks -- even when his big ideas failed. In looking back on our experiences with EMC, Intel, Sun, and Microsoft, we found similar issues existed for each company; each featured a CEO with a visionary agenda whose public persona was larger than life, especially when compared to our clients who were losing market share -- IBM's John Akers, Motorola's Gary Tooker, Hewlett-Packard's Lew Platt, and Kodak's Kay Whitmore."

"But the most interesting aspect of [Cisco CEO, John] Chamber's view of the future was not its ultimate accuracy. What was different about his vision was the fact that it wasn't a vision for Cisco. Chambers was offering a perspective on the future business model of his customers.

"Until the Marketplace of Ideas, a company's vision typically stayed inside the walls of the organization. Prior to the widespread adoption of digital technologies like PCs, cell phones, and the Web and the accompanying change in customers' expectations for differentiation, companies used vision predominantly to motivate employees, build morale, and strengthen company culture."

"In summary, the world's capacity for executive visibility -- especially for executives of digital companies -- grew exponentially and reinforced the demand for executives with presence and a vision of the future. Our momentum research validated the idea that a company's vision of the future could not be limited to its internal audiences. ...

"In order to achieve momentum, a company has to motivate not just the customers themselves, but also the ecosystem around a customer opportunity. The futures contract that comes with all digital brands must also include the brand extensions in a product or service ecosystem, or the company risks losing a source of differentiation."

"To address the futures contract he had with Cisco's customers, Chambers had to articulate a vision that promised to move its ecosystem partners in the right direction. In speaking to Cisco's telecommunications customers about the revenue opportunity at stake [reference to Cisco's famous 'voice is over' talk to telcos], Chambers was also trying to rally an entire industry around the economic opportunity available to third parties in the voice-to-data business transition. He had seen IBM and Wang lose ground to more nimble competitors as the business opportunity of corporate computing moved to the PC and computer-server business models, and he was certain that the same inclusive, standards-based business model would prevail for the Internet."

"We've said throughout this book that ideas about the impact of technology on business and people's lives are the currency of innovation in the Marketplace of Ideas. Customers expect momentum brands (and their CEOs) to tell them things they don't already know about how to solve old problems in new ways -- what we call thought leadership. In a B2B context, thought leaders illustrate over-the-horizon business concepts that describe the impact of digital technologies on a market's business models, business processes, or customer behaviors. "Conceptual innovation" is how the International Thought Leadership Council defines thought leadership.....The most effective forms of thought leadership extend beyond the "what" to the "how". In other words, customers want to know more than what to expect; they want to know how to understand the impact of digital technologies on their businesses, and what strategies, approaches, or models to deploy in order to take advantage of the new technologies."

"Think of your CEO as a product."

"Encourage your CEO to sacrifice around one of the three key areas of thought leadership: business processes, business models, or customer behavior."

"Look for sources of validation in the academic, consulting, or analyst communities." [Look for sources in trade press and especially blog posts.]

"Scale your CEO."

"Develop deliverables that scale your CEO's vision of the future, especially deliverables that are available via the Web. Include video and radio programs to establish a sense of the CEO's personality and how it aligns with the customer experience. The most common and effective channels for thought leadership are public speaking, best practices, case studies, original market research, white papers, and books. [And now blogs!!] These proven tools put your CEO's ideas in decision-making opportunities and conversations -- even when he or she isn't in the room." [Not the stress on the CEO's ideas….it's the ideas, the vision that need help spreading and the CEO cannot do it alone.]

Author: Evelyn Rodriguez | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Evelyn Rodriguez | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Case Study: Blogging to Spot Trends & Forecast Markets

Small Business Tends LLC is a company that uses blogs to spot trends and forecast the likely behavior of the small business marketplace.

For nearly a year now we have been collecting and organizing information about small business. The process has been an educational one.

With more than 300 pages up at Small Business Trends and the launch of a second TrendTracker website, we have learned that blogs are great for identifying trends and for disseminating insight into developing trends.

Spotting Trends

We daily roam the Web, print publications, TV and radio looking for information that tells us something about small business.

We rely heavily on news reports, traditional content-oriented websites, print publications, and newsletters for the intelligence we gather.

We scout out subject matter from a wide assortment of other blogs.

• First of all, blogs point us to original sources that have raw data. (Bloggers have a way of discovering the most intriguing information!)
• Second, blogs by their nature, with their culture of linking and creative thinking, tend to create buzz around popular topics. In other words, the more the blogs are talking about something, the more we pay attention -- it may signal an emerging trend.

Based on the most popular blog topics, we pull together a critical mass of information that we can then run through our small business filters.

We also rely on events and conferences, and our daily work interactions to identify trends. For example, we both are consultants with half a century of experience between us. We have worked at virtually every size organization, from large corporations, to small businesses under 100 employees, to solo home-based businesses. We have bootstrapped. We have raised outside funding. Our experience and how we apply it to ongoing relationships with small business clients are important ways that we take the pulse of the small business market.

And last but not least, we rely on input from our network of contacts -- and from our readers. A blog offers the opportunity for our readers to make comments. We learn from them. That level of interaction feeds back into our content gathering and trend recognition process. It also supports our efforts to bring more readers to the site.

Tracking Trends

Using blogging tools has helped us develop our websites and eased the process of publishing.

In a past life, we ran the Web's most popular motorcycle website. It had thousands of pages of content, multiple databases, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to develop and manage. Even so it was a lumbering beast compared to the immediacy of a blog.

With a traditional, dynamic, database-driven website, we were able at best to publish new information once a day. The process of publishing was laborious. Content would first have to be created. Then it would be passed on to developers who would code it. Next it would be loaded into a database. And finally it would be called up in a template.

With a blog we can publish new content at any time with the click of a mouse. Almost no coding needs to be done. There is no dedicated staff of developers. The people who gather and analyze information post it without having to rely on an IT department, content management specialists, Web developers, or database managers.

Because a blog is so easy to publish, we are light on our feet. We spend more time developing meaningful content and analyzing how the data supports developing trends. Almost no time is taken up in the process of organizing the presentation of our content.

Blogging has allowed us to pull together a creditable level of content far more rapidly and easily than we could have using earlier Web development tools. Take a look at Small Business Trends’ 300 plus posts and see if you don't agree.

What we have done with Small Business Trends and TrendTracker, would have been prohibitively expensive for a business of our size if we had stuck to traditional content management and Web publishing schemes.

Site Marketing and PR

We also use other blogs to market our blogs. By becoming active members of the blogging community we are able to trade links with blogs and to post on other blog sites. This, along with good focused content, has given us excellent search engine position, which in turn increases our traffic. Technology such as RSS feeds and newsreaders helps us get our content out to even more people.

We also utilize a traditional email newsletter. We’ve simply placed the signup link on our blog. We increased ten-fold the signup rate once we placed the link on the blog, versus the commercial website. The newsletter is free and serves as a marketing vehicle for the blog.

As a blogger, you are able to develop your reputation very rapidly. All you have to do to be an expert is to post good information and insights on a regular and frequent basis on a focused topic, and then let the world know about it.

Summary

Blogs are tremendously versatile websites. That makes them multi-purpose tools when it comes to spotting trends and forecasting the behavior of different marketplaces.

The process we have followed at Small Business Trends is one that can be adapted to any subject matter. It's simply a matter of immersing yourself in the blogosphere and seeing where it will take you.

Contact:

We will be available from 10:00 AM to 12:00 Noon (Eastern U.S. time) on July 13th via instant messenger to answer questions. We can be reached at "Smallbiztrends" on AOL instant messenger, and "smallbiztrends" on Yahoo messenger during those times.

Author: Anita Campbell | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Anita Campbell | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Blogs Are Corporate Brand Threats

Global PR Blog Week Day 2: Corporate Brand Threat: Blogs & Disruptive Messaging

The great power of the one-way brand marketing strategy via static print collateral, messaging and websites is losing ground to the interactive “talk-back” power of blogging. Are PR-backed blogging initiatives the “needed mechanism” which will help save the corporate marketing branders’ day?

Micro Media is Changing the PR Practice

The proliferation of Weblogs and RSS news feeds has changed the practice of public relations forever. Despite the belief in media consolidation, as TechJournalism’s Rebecca MacKinnon says, “We are no longer living in a world dominated by mass media conglomerates. Today readers are just as likely to be influenced by something they see on a blog as they are by an article in the New York Times.” As P&G’s Global Marketing Chief, R. Stengel, said in a recent Business Week article, “The Vanishing Mass Market,” which outlines the death of mass marketing, “P&G is now standing mass marketing on its head by shifting emphasis from selling to the vast anonymous crowd to selling to millions of particular consumers…[companies] find the people...are very focused on them....and become relevant to them.” This means that to keep clients relevant to consumers today that the role of the public relations counselor is changing quickly. Corporations are still looking to communications agencies to reach key audiences. The difference, however, is that PR pros must not only secure the "earned media coverage" they have been known to do for decades, but now they must also know how to include bloggers and their niche audiences (many of whom are part of the audiences they are trying to reach for their client organizations) into their media relations outreach. As MacKinnon says, “the rules of engagement are different” in this world of participatory journalism and disruptive messaging, or as McDonald’s Chief Marketing Officer now calls it “Brand Journalism.”

Fortune 500 Abandoning “the Universal Message”

In June 2004 McDonald’s CMO, Larry Light, made history. He announced in Advertising Age that the company is pulling further away from mass marketing because no single ad can tell the whole story in today’s economy. Pointing to the fact that we are a society now surrounded by the web, email, and wireless technology (which give us 24/7 global connections to each other), he went on to announce McDonald’s adoption of a new marketing technique called "Brand Journalism."

“No single ad can tell the whole story in today’s economy…brand journalism represents the end of brand positioning as we know it… We don't need one big execution of a big idea. We need one big idea that can be used in a multidimensional, multilayered and multifaceted way.” -McDonald’s CMO, Larry Light

The announcement of a change in McDonald’s marketing strategy was probably due to the fact that in January of 2003, the Company announced its first-ever quarterly loss--$343.8 million--since becoming a public company in 1965. Undoubtedly the announcement is also reaction to the movie, Super Size Me, which slapped McDonald’s in the face by coupling a gentleman’s one month McDonald’s-only diet with an extensive online marketing and blog monitoring campaign of his weight gain (which ripped through the blogosphere like wildfire). This caused brand damage. Mr. Light described the “Brand Journalism” concept he plans to use as marking "the end of brand positioning as we know it." (Al Ries & Jack Trout are you listening?) This is not ‘light’ news coming from the Chief Marketing Officer of the world’s #8 most valuable brand (see Business Week’s 2003 Interbrand Study).

Light’s new strategy entails using many stories rather than employing one message to reach everyone.

In effect, he declared that McDonald's was abandoning the universal message concept. He went on to define Brand Journalism, which he also referred to as a “brand narrative” or “brand chronicle,” as a way to record "what happens to a brand in the world," and create ad communications that, over time, “can tell a whole story of a brand.” To branch out, he said, “The Company is using many platforms and has shifted the advertising budget….two-thirds of that budget was once dedicated to prime time broadcast TV…now, only one-third is,” he said. Surely we wonder where exactly his budget is being shifted? Surely Light doesn’t mean merely moving his media budgets to the already heavily-funded customer touchpoints like email newsletters and wireless alerts to cell phones. Perhaps he means blogs?

“The Company is using many platforms and has shifted the advertising budget.”-McDonald’s CMO, Larry Light

Summary

In light of the above, blogs are posing threats to Fortune 1000 brands and in order to meet the new brand threat that blogs pose, corporations are attempting to influence bloggers in their media relations outreach, as well as shifting media budgets to strenghthen their own online corporate brand voices.

Author: Robb Hecht | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 1 comments
Category: @ Robb Hecht | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

A Very Brief Look at Blogging for the Uninitiated Executive

As usual the latest deluge of internet hype this time concerning blogs, bloggers, and blogging is doing more to nauseate us than enlighten us. Just about every techno-wonk in every type of publication around has written something about how blogs and their associated technologies are going to change everything (yet again). This quick piece is my attempt to cut through it all and merely provide an initial toe-hold for any non-nerd attempting to scale the mountain of hype that surrounds the blog phenomenon.

While I will be brief here I want to emphasize that the advent and evolution of blogs and associated technologies is definitely something significant and further reading is highly encouraged.

Firstly, don't get stuck on the term blog. Don't worry that you may have missed some important technical concept or that you haven't been paying close enough attention to Star Trek. Blog is simply an abbreviation for Weblog which was the name geeks gave to their online diaries they started publishing on the internet back in the jolly old 1990's.

Although a blog can still be used as a diary it may be less confusing to first think of a blog as a tool for publishing cheaply. What was once something that a fairly geeky person had to code and maintain on an internet server has been productized into an easy to use hosted publishing service. Now, for about $10/month, even a relative luddite can sign up with a blogging service like Typepad.com and easily publish a full-featured professional looking online journal.

While the underlying web technology hasn't really changed much blogs are a huge leap forward from the amateurish publishing we saw with "home pages" in the early days of the internet. The blogging services that we have today allow nearly anyone to easily create a publication very much like a magazine with features for publishing news and pictures in an attractive layout, archiving articles, advertising, syndication, and reader commentary.

Indeed what we are witnessing with today's blogging services might be better grasped as a publishing revolution rather than a technological revolution. Although creation of content and promotion still require hard work the barrier for entering publishing is barely a speed-bump anymore when anyone with a minimum of technical expertise can set up a nice looking online journal for a small monthly fee. Smart people and organizations are taking advantage of this advent in publishing and publications devoted to all kinds of interesting niches are popping up everyday.

Here are a few examples of how blogs are being cleverly used:

I-S-Cubed Inc. --- http://iscubed.typepad.com/onsecurity/
Corporate blogs are just now starting to appear and I-S-Cubed's blog is a good example of what we may soon come to know as a garden variety corporate blog. This blog is a timely journal about the company it represents. It says here we are, here's what we do, here are the interesting issues we're dealing with, and here are the thoughts of our key thinkers. Official corporate communication like press releases have not been forgotten but are instead woven into a more human readable stream of posts on the blog. The ISCubed blog is nice looking yet very economical and simply created using the Typepad service.

Payments News --- http://www.paymentsnews.com/
Payments News is the blog of the Glenbrook consulting group. The blog is a constantly updated digest of interesting news items touching financial services technologies and other areas related to Glenbrook's expertise. What better way to showcase your expertise than to publish a niche news journal devoted to things you find interesting and important for your clients? I think this blog is also created with the neat and economical Typepad service.

DPreview.com --- http://www.dpreview.com
DPreview is an extremely popular consumer website that has covered digital photography since 1998. While DPreview's format resembles a blog with news postings about digital photography, it is a definitely a full-featured website (with user forums etc.) and NOT a blog. I mention it here because it shows that a format similar to the blog format works for mainstream websites. And as blogging sevices evolve and become more robust I think the technical barrier to producing a site of this caliber will diminish significantly. Already with the blogging services we have today a cruder imitation of this digital photography journal can be created very easily. Imagine if Yahoo adopted a blogging platform and tied it into Yahoo groups functionality. Virtually anyone would be able to create a decently full-featured high-performance consumer news site.

Gawker Media --- http://www.gawker.com
Gawker Media is trying to create a bonafide media brand basically from scratch by building a stable of popular commercial blogs. Capitalizing on the economy and novelty of the blog medium Gawker has hired some good writers and has worked hard at old-fashioned mainstream publicity to create some really popular blog sites. Two of their most popular sites are Gizmodo and Wonkette with the former being a continuous stream of news and commentary on the world of digital gadgets and the latter a savvy political blog.

Intraware Blog --- http://itra.typepad.com
Since I'm writing this I have to mention my own company's fledgling corporate blog. I've tried to post interesting items with an angle toward Intraware but I also post material that I feel is generally interesting for our audience of investors, clients, and shareholders. It is definitely a corporate blog but I feel that original voice is important even in corporate writing and gives the blog a more personable feel. While norms for corporate blogging may emerge soon I would say that if you make it interesting, relevant, and have a little fun, you can’t go wrong. Telling your story with a good corporate blog beats the heck out of periodically issuing sterile press releases.

In Conclusion
I believe in being brief when writing for busy people so I am going to conclude here. I hope that this brief explanation and few examples have given you a more practical understanding of what the heck blogs are. As you gradually digest the blog concept I encourage you to read more. I think you'll find that the evolution of blogs, their related technologies, and emerging techniques for leveraging the blog medium are indeed something significant, and what all this fuss is really about.

And-- if you're an exec with too little time on her hands to keep up with stuff like this you might want to first look into the related technology for syndication called RSS. With most news sites providing RSS feeds nowadays, you can employ an RSS aggregator and then cover ten times the news you usually read in one quarter of the time. I have news fed into MS Outlook using Newsgator and I can scan through headlines on forty sites in ten minutes.

Author: Dave Austin | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 14 comments
Category: @ Dave Austin | Topic 2 Corporate Blogging

 

Blogs And Google PageRank

Like most webmasters, you face a constant uphill battle every day, in your attempts to increase your Google PageRank. You see other websites with PageRanks of 5, 6, 7, and even more, and wonder why it’s such a struggle for your website. You are searching for a way, to add those all important incoming links, to add those precious points of PageRank. If you are seeking a low cost solution to the problem, perhaps a weblog (more commonly referred to as a blog) may be just what you are looking for to help.

Before you dismiss blogs, as the domain of angst ridden teenagers and diaries of lunches no one cares about, take a closer look. Blogs have come a long way from those online diary days. They have brought some strong PageRanks along with them as well. Now part of the mainstream, we see blogs everywhere from business websites to political campaigns. They are not just about cheese sandwiches and the lovelorn anymore.

Blogs are becoming a powerful tool, for strengthening a website’s Google PageRank, by taking advantage of what blogs have to offer.

What is Google PageRank?

Google PageRank (one word) is the measure of an internet page based on the number and importance of a site’s incoming links. It is expressed as a numerical value, from PR0 to PR10, with PR10 being the highest possible PageRank (PR). Very few websites achieve that PR 10 level, of course.

Each level is more difficult to reach that one previous. The system is based on an exponential scale, similar to the earthquake Richter Scale. The only difficulty with the Google PageRank scale is no one is entirely certain how the numbers are calculated.

Incoming links for web pages are, in the opinion of Google, votes in favor of that page. On the other hand, Google considers some votes to be more important than others. The simple number of incoming links to a page is calculated by Google, but the relative importance of the “voting page” is given even more weight in the mathematical formula.

The pages that are considered to be more important votes, in turn increase the importance of the page they link. More important pages pass along more voting power. This is measured numerically as PageRank.

Note carefully, that PageRank is for each individual web page, not the entire web site as a whole. Every page in the Google data base has its own PageRank. Sites don’t have “rank”. Every separate page, however, on your web site has its own PageRank..

Be sure to always keep in mind, that PageRank is not the same thing, as your site’s ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). They are entirely separate items. PR is the relative importance of a page on the web, expressed as a number. The SERPs are where your site appears on a search for your keywords.

Why do blogs have such high Google PageRank?

Blogs tend to have very strong Google PageRanks. These high PageRanks are achieved through one of the hallmarks of the blogging technique. People who maintain blogs (called bloggers) are free and generous linkers. If gaining link exchanges was ever a problem for you in the past, you need to consider a starting a blog.

Incoming links are the determinant of PageRank. That is the strength of blogs. They attract both theme based link exchanges and natural links from other blogs. There are also a number of special blog only directories that supply an additional PageRank boost. That extra set of directories is not available to traditional websites unless they add a blog component.

Blogs are also well represented in the important mainstream web directories, including The Open Directory Project and by extension the Google Directory, and the Yahoo! Directory as well.

Blogs attract links because of several important factors. One of those factors is fresh, constantly updated content. It’s an old adage already that good content will attract links. With blogs, it is a fact. By providing your readers with quality daily posts, other bloggers will link to them, and comment upon them in their own blogs.

That linking achieves two goals. First of all, it adds a strong natural link. Secondly, due to the discussion of your blog post, in the linking blog, your incoming link is quite possibly themed. Because the linking blog is probably in the same general topic area as your blog, the theme is consistent. If it’s not a related blog, the context of the linking post itself can help to theme the link. In either case, your blog benefits from a solid boost in PageRank.

Bloggers are generous linkers to other blogs they enjoy, and posts they believe will be of interest to their readers. Google PageRank is an issue for very few bloggers. There is little concern in the blogging community (sometimes referred to as the “blogosphere”) about hoarding PageRank.

It is simply not on the radar of a huge percentage of bloggers. Because of that lack of concern, some very highly PageRanked blogs will freely exchange links, or link to another blog, with a much lower PageRank.

How can a blog enhance your site’s PageRank?

A blog can easily be added to an existing website. Many off the shelf blogging tools can be imported directly to your site. They can be easily modified to suit your requirements. On the other hand, a blog can be coded from the ground up, to provide a unique tailored look for your site. A blog can be set up as a separate free standing site as well.

Because of the daily, or at minimum three times a week updates, your blog has constant fresh and interesting content for your readers. That content will attract natural and unreciprocated incoming links. The bring valuable PageRank transfer, along with fresh visitor traffic.

If your content is sufficiently interesting and informative, two types of blog links will occur. One is the home page permanent link. The other is the themed link from a blog post. That themed link will slide off the home page, but will bring PageRank from an internal page. Bloggers routinely read other blogs and link to their selected posts, passing along valuable PageRank as a matter of course.

Bloggers like to make link exchanges and often they have no idea or concerns about Google PageRank. Many have never even heard of the concept. Some very good PR5 and PR6 home page blogs are blissfully unaware of that fact. They care about exchanges for traffic and interest to their readership, and will readily swap with blogs they or their readers might enjoy.

Google is thought to be discounting reciprocal links on many static websites, especially link exchange pages. On blogs, that discounting does not appear to be evident. Because blog links are heavily reciprocated, any penalties would show up quickly in a reduction of blog backlinks. That does not appear to be the case.

A quick glance at any number of blog backlinks will display many reciprocated links. One reason for that may be the fact that blog links are almost universally placed on the home page. Another is bloggers, in general, make link trades with other bloggers who write about the same theme. The on page text usually contains similar content, and often the same keywords, in both exchanging blogs.

The blog section of your website will add PageRank very quickly, often achieving a PR4 or PR5 within only a couple of months of existence. You can link that page, to any pages of your existing website, and provide that page with a PageRank boost. This is especially helpful if you are in a highly competitive keyword area.

Problems with blogs and PageRank

Everything is not perfect with blogs, but then nothing is ever without some flaws. Blogs have some shotcomings too.

One major problem to address with blogs, especially if you are utilizing a preset blog template supplied by one of the major blog platforms, is internal PageRank transfer. Blog PageRanks are heavily skewed to the home page. Many of the blog templates are not written with strong internal linkage. Because of that weakness, many internal pages in the archives, do not possess strong PageRanks.

To correct the internal link and PageRank distribution problem, the blog will often require some major changes in the sitemap structure. Since most bloggers have their most recent posts scroll off the front page, and into the archives, many bloggers are not concerned with the problem. That is a concern, however, if you are attempting to maximize PageRank. Some system of categorizing and highlighting, important and heavily searched blog posts, is needed.

Another area of concern are the incoming links themselves. If the link comes from a blog post, that has slipped off the home page, it may take the PageRank boost with it. That is another result of some blogs’ weak internal linking structure. The power of blog links is skewed heavily toward top page links. On the other hand, blogs with strong PageRanks will have some natural PageRank transfer to the internal pages, despite the blog template limitations.

Long term, there may be some potential for concern, about the heavy use of reciprocal linking between blogs. Any possibility of penalties, for excessive reciprocal links should be seriously considered. Adding more natural links and directory links could certainly help in that regard. Over dependency on link exchanges should be avoided. Some degree of balance is needed to maintain a solid ratio of incoming and outgoing links.

Conclusion

Blogs are a powerful tool for developing Google PageRank. They can be utilized as part of an existing website, or as a free standing independent entity. In either case, PageRank accruing to the blog pages can be transferred to any other website pages that need an influx of PageRank.

Transfer can be accomplished through internal linkage, if the blog is part of the existing website. PageRank can flow from a free standing blog by standard linking practices from another website.

Blogs receive strong Google PageRanks, because they gain many powerful incoming links, in a surprisingly short period of time. PR4 and PR4 rankings within the first two to three months of a blog’s existence are commonplace.

Bloggers are free and generous linkers, who happily link to other blogs they enjoy, or as a service to their own readership. Along with those links comes a healthy boost of PageRank. The constantly updated postings to blogs will add many natural and unreciprocated links as well. The fresh content and high PageRanks get many blogs crawled by internet spiders on a daily basis.

The current concern with reciprocal links being downplayed by Google, and the other search engines, doesn’t appear to be evident with blogs. Because link exchanges among blogs tend to be between blogs with similar themes, the reciprocal links are not a problem at this point. That could change, however, so diligence in gaining natural and unreciprocated links is still necessary.

To give your website a much need PageRank shot in the arm, try adding a blog.

It could be the biggest boost to your site’s Page Rank yet.

Author: Wayne Hurlbert | Jul 13, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments