A while ago Cristi Manafu (ro) (an influential Romanian blogger) asked me this question: “Who should be the lead actor of the company blog?”

The lead actor of a company blog should be, extending the definition a bit, the company or its product. Who writes about these in the blog is a different matter.

Usually, the best and most up-to-date bloggers for a company are exactly the people with the less time to write: the management. And indeed managers do not write in company blogs, with a few exceptions (Bob Lutz, Vice President for General Motors, is one such exception – he writes frequently on the company blog).

Anyway, how can this problem be solved?

1. There is the possibility of “semi-ghost blogging“: someone (in the management) writes a first draft (with links, general information on the subject etc.), which he gives to the ghost blogger, who edits it, adds extra info if necessary and publishes the post. This way, instead of 20-30 minutes or even more, writing a post only takes 10 minutes.

2. A solution for writing a corporate blog is creating a team of bloggers, who can be part of the management, of the employees or even of the users of the company’s products (the so-called “evangelists”). Team members can have set days for writing on the blog. This way, by writing, for example, once a week, the time frame for writing a post increases and it stops creating pressure.

3. Another version of a team blog is having one blogger who interviews people in the industry and the company, people who have access to interesting and less-known information, but no time to write it down.

A few essential characteristics of the company blogger (or bloggers).
- Staying calm in the online environment, which is often very acid and violent (verbally violent, of course);
- Are genuinely interested in the industry the company deals in and in the company’s products;
- Aren’t ordinary employees who are giving the daily task of writing the blog among several other daily tasks.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few details but this is mainly the answer to “WHO should write in a corporate blog?”

Here are the first four articles in the series:

1. What is a blog?
2. What is a business/corporate blog?
3. External Business Blog
4. Internal Business/Corporate Blogs

Internal business blog (or internal company blog)

Lately, the internal blog has started to replace e-mail at an extent, because many times it is more practical in terms of communication.

Disadvantages of e-mails:
- A large number of e-mails are received;
- A large number of e-mails are lost;
- Spam filters are not as good as we’d want them to be.

Advantages of blogs:
- They encourage team spirit, collaboration and team work and they are ideal for heterogeneous teams;
- They offer the possibility of expressing different points of view and discussions concerning them;
- They turn into an archive for the company (ideas and projects are all present in the blog for later analysis, reading etc.);
- Ideas and suggestions are communicated rapidly from one level to another.

For the advantages of external business blogs, read External Business Blogs.

Here are the first three articles in the series:

1. What is a blog?
2. What is a business/corporate blog?
3. External Business Blog

External business blog

The most common type of business/corporate blog right now is the external blog, be it a promotion, PR, marketing or product presentation blog.

This type of blog is offered publicly for reading, it is not restricted to a specific audience (employees of a company, for example).

What are the advantages of an external business blog?

First of all, the community. The readers of the blog are people with the same interests of the author, who have the same hobbies or who are interested in the same type of products – it’s not unusual to see a community around a type of car, such as the one created around the blog of the Vice President of General Motors, Bob Lutz. A good example of the power of the community is the response to what Bob Lutz wrote about the new Chevrolet Camaro.

The community can offer you new business opportunities, new ideas, it can tell you if your proposals are wrong or not.

Cutting costs

The community becomes the one to say yes or no to a new project (can you imagine creating a product which has no market?). The same community will suggest improvements and will criticize, thus reducing research costs. After all, your community is the one most likely to buy what you’re offering. If they don’t like your product, do you think there is a chance the others will?

Extra income

It can be safely assumed that a community that reads a blog will ask the author(s) when they want to buy a product or when they need a service in that certain domain. For example, if the owner of a bed & breakfast in a mountain resort has a blog about how to satisfy your customers, how to get ready for a trip in the mountains etc., we can expect that his readers, when they decide to go to the mountains, will make a reservation with him.

There are also other advantages, such as recognition from the community, authority status on the subject at hand, communicating the messages directly to the community (when did you last have the opportunity to talk daily to 1000 people who use your products or services?) or the possibility to control the evolution of an unpleasant event by transmitting your own version of the facts, without the filter of the press or press releases, which may not be very credible in the community.

For the advantages of internal business blogs, tomorrow.

Here are the first two articles in the series:

1. What is a blog?
2. What is a business/corporate blog?

A business blog is first and foremost a blog (if you don’t know what a blog is, read here). Second, its subject is a business or a company, economics or anything similar.

Business blogs can be classified in several ways:

External business/corporate blogs:
- Presentation blog
- Marketing blog
- Branding blog
- PR blog

Internal blogs:
- Company culture promotion blog
- Ideas blog
- Project/Team blog

These are the main business blog categories. To find out what these blogs can do for your business/company, come tomorrow for another article.

If you got here, you basically know what it’s about. But, just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, let’s try a simple definition:

A blog is an internet website which respects a certain structure, defined by the reverse chronological order the content appears in on the front page.

A little complicated (and I kept it simple, believe me), but this is exactly what a blog is: a series of articles and texts about a domain of the author’s choosing, arranged in the reverse order they were entered in the database (the latest appear highest on the front page).

A blog is defined by its subject and its author. Compared with ordinary websites, the blog emphasizes the personal experiences of its author (a lawyer keeping a blog will usually write about his cases, about what he believes, usually without specific law terms).

A blog can be defined in greater detail and, furthermore, there are many different types of blogs: personal blog, business blog, photoblog etc. Later, you can read about business blogs.

I have stubmled yesterday on this page that shows a series of answer from top stumblers to two questions:

1. What do you usually look for to stumble (article, video and podcast)?

2. What do you advice bloggers to do in order to increase their chances of getting stumbled upon?

It is interesting to see what the top stumblers say:

- it is important to participate in the community: vote on other pages, discover interesting pages, join groups, network with other users with similar interests;
- have a clean design to your site;
- make the content as readable as possible: stumblers have to be “caught” in your content because another page, maybe a lot more interesting, is at a click of the mouse away;
- catch the attention of the stumbler: use images, use an interesting introduction;
- do not spam other users requestiong votes.

There are more ideas in the responses of the stumblers, but basically: entertain and offer interesting information.

I have seen there sites like digitalpoint, digg, JohnChow.com, sites I visit almost daily myself. This shows that typical bloggers use almost the same sources for information and how-to’s.

Via JohnChow.

I think it is an interesting read and a very motivational one indeed, especially in these days of summer when you’re thinking of everything BUT working

Earning through your blog/website with internet advertising is easy once you have done the initial hard work. Process starts right after creating website by going through search engine submission process of major search engines. Some hosting providers also offer such services bundled in their internet marketing solutions package for premium customers. To offer more sophisticated and effective internet marketing, hosting companies and advertising agencies include the script to monitor and run ppc ad campaigns. Several online advertising agencies also offer the services typically for more advanced and large advertising campaigns.

P.S.: Digg the story, if you find it interesting.

He pinpoints some ways of finding unique sources of content, among them:

interview other experts, create interactive contests, offer awards, etc. – these touches the ego of others and uses their reach to help market your site (one thing I did for my Romanian blogging community, but with podcasts)

parallel markets – read information from other markets and relate it to your current market – I find this very interesting, since I rarely see information crossover.

One more thing I did not see on that list, while not that unique, it will surely help you create unique content: if you are creating evergreen content (gardening is a good example), look for books that are out of the copyright timeframe and use the texts found there. Of course, my advice is not copy/paste it, but add some up-to-date information and, there it is: new and unique content.