BusinessWeek cover curse?

Here's how the cover story could become a curse.

1. CEO/CMO reads cover story. Wow, do we have bloggers? Who are they and what are they saying?
2. Chief marketing officer gets order: We need a policy.
3. E-mails fly. Is blogging giving our secrets away? Are we under attack? Do we have a policy?
4. Lawyers enter. Depending on the regulatory environment of the company (drug companies vs. publishers). Company receives stern warnings about the hazzards of being in the publishing biz.
5. Managers with P&L responsibitilies read memos. What's this doing to our productivity? I thought we cut our marketing budget? Cut it out.
6. Blogging reverts to PR and Marketing, or maybe Sales. Goes stale. Is forgotten.

The facts are that: (a) more people are turning to the internet to find businesses and services; (b) a lot of small businesses don't have websites and are not internet savvy; and, most importantly, (c) only so many websites can show up as the top websites under a certain search phrase on Yahoo and Google.

I think the term "blog" is meaningless to most people and to most businesses. Yes, every business will eventually need a web presence. But, that "web presence" could be called a blog, a forum, a website or even "a business card".

The biggest problem with "the blog design" right now is that it is not very "Google Adsense Fiendly" (because the text on most blogs have "ever changing urls", requiring repeated re-roboting in order to serve targeted ads).

From what I can tell, we ( http://www.tempcity.com/agencies ) had the first website targeted at businesses interacting with customers on the net. We have "forums" dedicated to businesses (temp agencies mostly) which the business can moderate. I think our "forums" are much more efficient and "easier to manage" than "business blogs". All a business would need have to "moderate a fourm" on our board is a user name and a password. We do however have the blog option available.

I think Copeland's a bit off on his critique of your blog article. Comparing that cover to a bunch of covers making market calls is kind of silly. He should be looking at covers that consider sociocultural phenomenon that affect business.

But I do think he got it right that your cover article was conventional wisdom, at least among those who follow this kind of thing. Now that you've gotten a few posts up at Blogspotting, it looks like you'll go beyond what can happen on BW's pages and that's one of the strengths of blogging.

I've been following Brand New Day recently because he's the best marketing blogger on hip hop issues. Some of the ad blogs may be hipper, but they waffle between dumbfounded stupefaction at the success of hip hop and disdain for its existence. David Kiley may not be as entertaining a read but he knows what he's talking about because he talks to people in hip hop. When he doesn't know, he doesn't front like he has insights. I just wish he'd post more often.

I think a lot of crazy corporate activity will happen in the blogosphere. Actually, it already is, with ghostwritten CEO blogs (Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick the amazing exception), fake fan blogs to build brands and undisclosed paid product placements in blog posts.

Fortunately there are cool things happening too. I'm noticing the emergence of partnerships between media companies and bloggers. For example, Billboard has partnered with PaidContent.org to produce PostPlay, an excellent trade blog on digital music:
http://billboard.blogs.com/billboardpostplay/

Rafat at PaidContent.org is a guy to watch. His blog was my biggest inspiration for ProHipHop and it just keeps adding more projects. Next up for him is a blog on the digital content scene in India. Talk about being ahead of the game!

Don't let the haters get to you. I predict long term success for your blogs as well as amazing development within business blogging, but that's a no-brainer.

"You try to buy a passel of them."

If an independent blogger is making money, why would he/she sign up with a big media organization? Rather than buy up patches of existing blogosphere would it not make more sense for established news organizations to build their own addition to blogosphere? Such as the News & Record and Bluffton Today are doing?

Agree with many of your comments, esp re: the power of the network. Also, there's more to this blogging (esp in corporate blogging) than we're currently seeing. The beauty is that it's incredible democratic -- you'll KNOW how well your doing by watching the stats/comments on your blog.
2005 is the year that blogs took off (look, I'm already using the past tense!). Helped with the residue of the election-related blogs, continuing with the impact of the Tsunami-related postings, to high-profile job losses, to your BW cover article. But we've only just begun.

I'm still new at this game. Haven't figured out yet how to respond to individual comments. Alice, your point about why big media companies wouldn't start their own blog operations: Many will. (Look at us!) But I do agree with Copeland's point that the blog companies are much more likely to master the medium--and move a whole lot quicker. So while a handful of entrenched media companies may well succeed in blogs from the ground up, I'm betting that far more of them will end up trying to buy their way into the various markets.

Blogging about blogging is boring. Why not focus on business issues, and integrate your reporting in a blog-like format. Now that would be interesting.

Steve-- I enjoyed the article: very well researched. I learned things that I had not learned from months of perusing Jarvis, Gillmor, et al.

What you nail is that blogs have become a killer app for PR and marketing. But it's less clear that they are effective for internal communications. In that sense, the blog format is very much overhyped, though the values of constructive media are a good start.

I will disagree with one statement you make in the article.

"The measure of success in that world [the open world, chock-full of citizen publishers] is not a finished product. The winners will be those who host the very best conversations."

This is still problematic since there has been little understand of what "the very best conversations" are.

Stephen and Heather,

I enjoyed your article very much. Especially on track based on my extensive (13 months!) blogging experience are your mentions of 1) fragmentation of media control, 2) the "long tail"/narrowcast phenom, and people creating value by aggregating, filtering and analizing this mass of digital communication.

Nice work.

AlwaysOn & KPMG Present "On the Record: CEO Breakfast Focusing on the New, New Media Market"

Well, it's amazing what a tiny digital voice recorder set on LP "conference" mode can pick up ... so here's the audio record of the recent AlwaysOn / KPMG "On the Record CEO Breakfast" Focusing on the "New New Media Market." It's slightly edited and consists of the most interesting "sound bytes" of the event.

The audio quality is fairly reasonable, but maybe next time we can use lavaliere wireless mikes ... :-)

Enjoy!

Here's the roster ...

Moderators:
Scott Rafer, CEO, Feedster
Bernard Moon, Reality Media Columnist, AlwaysOn

Panel:
Michael Moe, CEO & Chairman, ThinkEquity Partners LLC
David Sifry, CEO, Technorati
Nick Kingsbury, Global Sector Head - Software, 3i
Jonathan Abrams, Founder, Friendster
Andrew Anker, EVP Corporate Development, Six Apart
Christopher J Alden, CEO, Rojo Networks

Closing Remarks:
Mike Sly, AlwaysOn

http://vpwpartners.blogs.com/viewpoint_west_partners/2005/04/alwayson_kpmg_p.html

Folks, you cut off the URL from my last post, so here it is again:

http://vpwpartners.blogs.com/viewpoint_west_partners/2005/04/alwayson_kpmg_p.html

I thought your article was well-reseached and thought out. To be honest, I've never even *looked* at a BW magazine with any intention of buying it. I saw the cover and had to buy.

It caught my attention and interest, mainly because I blog and as a web designer, incorporate blogs into many of my client sites. I recommend blogging to many of my clients for various reasons--quick updating of their site whenever they want, more frequently updated=more frequently spidered=better search engine standings (generally), and fresh content encourages return visitors...to name a few.

As for companies finding out they have underground bloggers or making policies about blogging...that's going to happen. The bloggers just need to use common sense in what they write--and to be totally honest, I think both sides need to chill a bit on that issue.

My 2 cents...

speaking of corporate blogging, I found this ingenious.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5143179122

don't know if you'll be able to see the whole link, but essentially a proficient blogger offered up his "blogging services" on ebay. The winning bidder paid $2K for him to set up the blog and write 3 months of daily posts.

Here's the blog he sent up for them:
http://www.cincinnati.md/blog/

I picked up your article in the airport and it has me awake at night thinking about the possibilities and new ways to communicate with my clients. I must admit that I am a bit lost at the moment. But I do have a Blog. I think! Now off to learn how to optimize and make it an effective tools for me to communicate with my clients. Any suggestions are welcome.

Big Corporate Media may try to build their own blogs, but the best bloggers will always make more money and have more freedom staying indy than any media outlet could every pay them.

That's why your prediction is wrong. The economics will never work. They simply won't be able to afford the best.

BAKER responds: This is an interesting point. Kos is without doubt one of the top bloggers. If he could tell us how much he's making now, and how much he expects to be making in a year or two as the business grows, we'll be in a better position to analyse whether big media can afford to hire top bloggers or buy their businesses. Kos?

Another reason Big Corporate Media won't be able to duplicate what Indy bloggers are building? They, like this blog, will hold comments for pre-approval. Lame, and good way to lose credibility and respect.

Is this one of those "malicious" comments you are guarding against?

If he could tell us how much he's making now

Quite a bit.

And really, you don't respond to a comment inside of someone else's comment. You post a NEW comment responding to a previous one.

i dont find it boring, actually its a very nice article.

Good info.
I have some nice stores and want to share it address.
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broyhill furniture online
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eurorail
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Blogs do have the potential to help convert business, but much depends on how the owner implement it.