NetCamp had some great guests in the panels (guests I couldn’t see in the first part of the day, unfortunately, though people said the presentations were really worth the time): Hugh MacLeod, Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, Miel Van Opstal, Mihai Crasneanu, Nir Manor (ro), Eirik Solheim.

More, the Romanian guests were really up to the task. Of what I’ve seen, Dragos Manac had a great presentation (you can read more here, in Romanian): How to fail in the Internet industry.

As usual, for me at least, the most fun and important moments were outside the presentation room. I had the chance to talk to Hugh, Miel, Mihai, Nir and Eirik and discovered, as usual, a lot more than I could from just attending the sessions. Since I want to go around the world in 6 months, I asked a lot of questions and, what do you know: Norway should be visited in the summer and, if I want to see the Aurora Borealis, I should go to Iceland (Eirik told me so), Miel likes to sit on the floor and says that if I ever get to Belgium, his door is open and his floor is there if I ever need to sleep for a few nights , Nir and Mihai proved to be great sources of information about entrepreneurship and investment.

The names I just mentioned are names I don’t usually meet. But I met with everybody who’s everybody in the Romanian online industry. Making a list here would mean I have to make a new blogroll in this post.

My conclusions after this event?

Dragos and Cristi did a very good job organizing it (Cristi invited me there, what else should you need to understand he did a great job? ).

The Net Start-Up competition was a little bit unclear. We really didn’t know if we had to give points to the idea or to the project. Finally, I decided to go in between. I hope the participants got the most of it (the final 5 had an hour of coaching with important people in the industry like Calin Fusu, Orlando Nicoara, Vlad Stan, Mihai Seceleanu, Rachad el Jisr. ). The finalists were:

George Lemnaru, erepublik
Alex Brie, restaurant reviews, yelp.com like
Emi Gal, vertimo
Cătălin Teniţă, noprimetime
Vladimir Oane, captaingo.com

(list from zoso)

With the exception of George Lemnaru, all of the finalists are friends of mine so congratulations are in order. And since everyone of them won an XBox, apparently I have where to choose from to play Halo these holidays

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend first presentation sessions and I didn’t quite attend the third one, either (I stayed in the lobby with Eirik and Miel, I think).

Finally, I am glad that such an event exists in Romania and I invite you all to be present next time.

P.S.: Cristi Manafu became a father the next day. Congratulations! Now, this is a difficult job, not organizing an international event

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.