Robert French, the author of InfOpinions? and an enthusiastic adopter of weblogs and wikis in his PR classes at Auburn University, has just started a new weblog called BLOGthenticity that invites business bloggers share how weblogs has impacted their businesses:
We are seeking ‘real business bloggers’ who have adopted blogs into their business marketing plan.An initial short list of what we want to discuss includes the following:
- how the blogs have helped the business
- why did these businesses choose to launch a blog
- what are some of the strategies they are incorporating into their blogs
- how does the blog assist in customer relationship management
- does your blog drive sales
- does your blog support your products
- what value has blogging added to your business
The first contributor is Paul Woodhouse from The Tinbasher Blog.
Thanks Constantin. I’m surprised you actually found it. BLOGthenticity is really new.
Paul is actively participating in the creation and philosophy/purpose of the blog. It all came about through conversations about how we can read PR/Marcom practitioners in MarcomBlog and how it would be great to do the same with active business bloggers. Our goal is to create a resource for everyone (but, especially my students, of course) to use and learn how successful brick & mortar businesses have adopted blogs. Perhaps the blog will provide ideas for future pitches/implementations.
We’ll make a formal launch pretty soon. :) Right now it is all about the lining up of contributors. Thanks for giving us a shout out! Take care.
Honestly, sometimes the blogosphere is leakier than a rickety sieve. Still, never underestimate the network effect of blogs!
Personally I’m wanting BLOGthenticity to provide a niche for quality business blogs to enable us to develop our own curve of the blogosphere. It’s all a bit odd that everybody is told what a boon business blogging is, but hardly ever by those doing it themselves.
Those of us doing it correctly know all the benefits and I think it’s time to cultivate a stronger voice. It’ll also supply further credibility to the medium and hopefully be a useful vehicle for evangelism.
Robert has done an immense job of setting everything up so quickly. Not only do I hope it proves a valuable resource for Robert’s students, but that Robert’s students prove a valuable resource in their own right. There’s some real talent amongst that lot and it’s testimony to Robert’s understanding and teaching of the medium that his students have produced such excellent blogs.
Robert, sorry if I spoiled the launch! That was never my intention. I thought that if it’s live and if it says "join us!", it must be public :). Anyway, the blog is looking great, and you already have some great content posted on it — nothing to be ashamed of! :cool:
Paul, the title of your new blog points to a vital problem in business blogging: authenticity. Maybe it’s not so important, after all, when and why a business jumps on the blogging bandwagon — it will be far more important (and interesting to see) how the ones starting to blog for businesses are addressing the challenge of authenticity, and how the permanent feedback will change their worldview. That’s were business bloggers will have a lot to learn from people like you, and from blogs like BLOGthenticity.
Oh, hey … no problem. I’m glad you found us. :grin: We’re happy to have the exposure! Thanks!
BLOGthenticity, from my view as a contributing member of the group, seeks to expose and deflate the “bloatosphere”, whilst encouraging and escalating the business blog sector, guiding it to the most effective and efficient practices.
“bloatosphere” = the realm of blogs that is becoming bloated, fattened, by the accumulation of pseudo-blogs, anti-blogs, drivel blogs, and link farms.
Ghost-blogging is another particularly menacing phenomenon, IMHO. This is where an ad agency or marketing person ghost-writes posts for a client or company, so it’s not the authentic, candid, sincere voice of the actual blog author, but a proxy.
Pseudo-blogs include non-interactive unilateral broadcast blogs (no comments and no contact form), ghost-blogger blogs, and simulated blogs created simply to be trendy and to trick consumers into thinking the company “has a blog”.
Drivel blogs are the personal blogs that are poorly written and designed, have no value except catharsis and narcissistic self-expression for the blog author, usually abandoned after author realizes no one cares or comments.
I hope to post some of my best writing, research articles, ecommerce tips, writing guides, etc. over there.
Thanks for the publicity.