I haven’t read much but I’ll read it all eventually.

Meanwhile, I read Annette’s Thinking out loud business blog without fail.

If you come across any more examples of Irish business blogs I’d be interested.

You probably know this already but the CEO of Leclerc - the French hypermarket franchise - blogs. (I’m not sure I’ve spelt the company correctly.)

I’ve thought of starting a business blog for my business but I’m most interested in the relationship between the “domestic” and the “public/business”, the way people live in the boundaries they create… so I’m holding off… consequently my blog is a bit of a mishmash…

Thanks again.

It’s a pity this discussion didn’t go on for longer. Perhaps it is going on somewhere else?

I’d like to join in discussion about blogging for business.

I feel like adding a couple of extra reasons why companies might gain from blogging:

(1) Building company culture
(2) Humanising the organisation

All organisations need to attend to their culture. Perhaps blogging, if it is done well, may help an organisation to (a) recognise and clarify its culture , (b) develop its sense of and attachment to its culture and (3) encourage people to buy into its aspirational culture.

Business organisations are easily characterised as soul-less, profit-obsessed and ultimately empty. No matter whatever are the business objectives, all businesses are organisations of people. Blogging may facilitate the expression of complex emotional intelligence behind business decision making. A CEO who blogs about the things that matter to her or him is both sharing values and constructing a more humane organisation. Such an image may benefit the brand.

But, as you know, there are not even enough business bloggers in Ireland to make up a quorum of early adopters… So we have the future for that.

by the way the link to my new blog is here

Talking about the “how” is a great way to straddle the personal and business. I rarely post anything personal so I dodge that issue!

I’m looking forward to reading your new blog - you must send me on a link

I just had a discussion with Tom on typos and other errors in a blog and how it may affect the effectiveness of the blog.

i need to more clinical on this myself..

I’m sure this is just a once-off for you. I’m sure MS Word has messed us up.

Donagh

So far all the blog has costed is some of my time while I work on redeveloping the website. I havent need to pay for software and any images on it are free.

If the blog does really well we can get it a domain name or buy a blog software to move it to the same host as the website, while if it does badly the company hasn’t taken to big a risk.

Also personally I like the communities that come with a hosted blog, even though bloghoster doesnt really have one yet. You are virtually sharing space with people talking about more and less important topics, and your readers can also stumble across other sites in the communty and maybe get more out of the experience.

@Larkin - thanks for the kind words. I agree absolutely with the wiki/bb points you made - I just didn’t want to bring them up in a post about blogs - I didn’t want to dilute the post and possibly confuse the issue.

You are spot on as well with the archive point.

The other point I forgot to address in the post was the whole “joining in the conversation” one - I think I’ll have to do a sequel!

Posting is not an easy thing to do. It takes time to research, draft, re-draft, etc. You are always conscious of not just rehashing what others have already said. Corporate blog posts can turn into mini-magazine articles. And comments received are like gold-dust, an affirmation that someone out there is either listening or ‘gets’ what you do.

On the knowledge management side of things, I agree with what you say to a certain extent, though I think wikis are better for general knowledge management and forums / bulletin boards are better for fact finding or idea forming / brainstorming. All three (blogs, wikis and forums) belong to a close knit family though.

I think business blogs, while they may give a lowish return in the beginning, can become an archive for a company’s achievement and evolution. In years to come, prospective customers will see a depth and a history to the company via their blogs. If a blog only goes back a few months, customers may wonder if the company has been at the races over the years, whereas a large archive with growing numbers of comments, will reflect positively on the solidity and authority of the company (assuming the posts are of a sufficient quality and the feedback is reasonably positive).

We also sell static control devices and cleanroom consumables (think the bunny suits the csi’s wear and that they wear the in the questionable apple ad).

Tom convinced me. In the past 6 months, while still learning how to do this properly, i have noticed that when I meet new potential clients that they are familiar with my thinking on developing technology businesses.

Blogging helps build a relationship with your potential market and existing clients. I think it develops and builds trust. They get to know you and are more comfortable in doing business with you.

It does takes time to write the posts

DeCare Systems blog is a good example of this - they have 9 contributing authors (although there hasn’t been a new article posted these last two weeks!).

Just waaay to busy at the moment

What’s interesting is that even though a few companies blog, and are shown statistics on web traffic, they often still don’t believe it’s having an impact, and as a result the blog is way down the list of priorities.