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Ten (German) Reasons For Business Blogging
The always very productive PR Blogger Klaus Eck lists "10 Gruende fuer das Business-Bloggen". His reasons for business blogging includes credibility, network building and simultaneous messages to all target groups.
Blogs And PR: The Basics
Philip Young, a senior lecturer in Public Relations at the University of Sunderland, has written an article about blogging for the Sept/Oct edition of the Institute of Public Relations magazine, Profile. The article may be too basic, but still a good summary of how blogs affects the PR business. If nothing else, it's interesting to read what the non-blogging majority of the business is learning about participatory communication.
But why, why, why publish the text in MS Word...?
Forget E-mail In Marketing
The Trademark Blog is saying, what I find myself saying more and more to clients: Email is becoming unusable as a business tool.
"If you are trying to get in touch with me today, please either fax, call, write(Via Netlawblog)
or take out a magazine ad. Do not, repeat do not email me."
New Stuff In The B-sphere
New Swedish Blog Tool And Host
A tip to my Swedish readers, if there are any. Webblogg.se is a new, Blogger-like, blog tool/host - the first I have seen in Swedish.
Don't Overestimate The Power Of Blog Links
I have been doing some digging in the statistics of this site. As most bloggers I watch how many inbound links I get. It is strange bordering on the ridiculous, but with few other measurable results, watching the amount of conversation involving you is a way to make blogging worth the effort.
The question is, do blog links give any hard results besides the fact that a new link makes you go to sleep a bit happier...? Does blogs generate visits?
We could just say "yes" - end of discussion. That would be true. A link here and there gives you some random visitors. But if we make the question a bit more complicated, it is another story: Can blogs drive traffic to you the way traditional web sites can?
When I look in my stats reports, the answer is "absolutely not". The last three months something like 250 blogs have linked to this blog. Two thirds of them has generated less than 10 visits. A substantial number, say 40 blogs, has generated one click. One click, that would be the blogger himself checking that the link works.
This can be compared to Marketing.about.com where one link in two weeks has generated almost 400 visits, or Kommunikationsforum, a small Danish site, almost 150 visits.
Ok, I can hear you screaming: Doesn't he understand that he's just not good enough to be linked by the really good and big blogs, which would change the stats entirely!?
That might be the case. But most blogs aren't referred to by Doc Searls or bloggers like him.
That is why I come to the conclusion that you should not overestimate the power of blog links. They are a nice way of watching and engaging in the conversation, but they will not give you that many visitors. If you are struggling to find new readers, focus on finding ways to get into the traditional web sites. The readers are still there. And you may be their first encounter with a blog, which gives you amazing opportunities to grab their attention.
Blogging Company Promotes Blogging To Its Customers
In the latest issue of SAP INFO - which is an online customer magazine - the world's largest inter-enterprise software company SAP tells its customers what corporate blogging is all about (through an interview with Martin Röll of Das E-business Weblog).
People within SAP are also blogging, managers as well as developers. But it is not a company with economic interests, as far as I know, in participatory communication tools. They are just using the tools - and obviously finding them interesting enough to highlight them in their own market communications.
I find this interesting. As I have said before, SAP could be one of the most important forerunners in corporate blogging just by doing it. Now they are promoting it, even if it is on a very basic level.
Wikis Can Take Off In A Corporate Setting
Here's a wiki primer from AP (via Micro Persuasion).
Where Wikis can truly take off are in corporate and organizational settings, they say giving examples from research - craft guidelines on research ethics - and education where students annotate and discuss poems.
Moreover, workers keep their calendars and managers can rearrange priorities finding the Wiki's attraction is in its efficiency. Unlike e-mail and discussion boards, which tend to involve back-and-forth exchanges and lots of attachments, Wikis permit changes directly to the main document.
A Look Into The Crystal Bowl
Elizabeth Albrycht thinks "...we need to pay more attention to the transformations these tools enable than the tools themselves" and she is looking forward to the day when there are no more big business press articles and so on about blogging.
I couldn't agree more. Maybe that sounds strange considering that this most of the time is a meta blog - a blog about blogs - but it is all a question of perspective. Today we need those press articles. Many professional communicators need people around who can tell them what a blog is. Today. But that will change.
I have no idea what will happen then, but here is a few guesses (it's Friday after lunch, I'm entitled to give you a not so theoretically well-founded post...)
The question is when this will happen? What do you think? 2-5 years?
More Authors Keeping "Online Journals"
Business blogging is spreading.
From AP: "Author blogs are also the latest reminder of how times have changed since writers simply wrote their books and let the publishers - and the work itself - speak for them. Now, many authors arrange their own tours, maintain Web sites, send e-mail newsletters and, in the case of Weiner and others, offer ongoing personal commentary."
As we see more and more businesses blogging the early adopters - techies, librarians, PR folks and so on - will form the old, seasoned gang. I wonder when the first great debates between blog traditionalist and newcomers will start? What will be said? It's a funny thought, think of Robert Scoble or Jonathan Schwartz - or maybe consultants like me, without any other comparisons - defending the old and true way.
I still remember when I wanted to add graphics to a web page back in the 90's - it finally was done but I don't think the webmaster ever forgave me...
The Blogosphere Proves Nobel Laureate's Point?
Need a theorethical foundation to understand what you're really doing?
Tech Central Station: "If Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek had been watching last week as bloggers spontaneously responded to fraudulent documents aired by the program '60 Minutes', he would've grinned in humble satisfaction. Hayek's work centered on the effectiveness of spontaneous, decentralized organization, which is precisely what occurred on PowerlineBlog on September 9th."
Quick Tip: Feeds On Your Site
We all have to make a living - which in my case means that I can't blog as much as I want to. To find a middle way I have started a Bloglines Clipping Blog that I syndicate to this site. Look to the right side now...
This leads me to the quick tip:
Many of us don't have CM-systems with built-in functions to display RSS feeds. Unless we know for example Perl (I gave up years ago), JavaScript is the easiest option. There are a number of services for that, but my favorite is Feed to JavaScript from Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction. Amazing that they host this, without ads or other annoying stuff. Sure, with JavaScript there is always the question about capacity - but if that becomes a problem the code is free to run on your own server.
I can't guarantee you that it works perfect, but I have used for some time at my corporate site without problems.
Sun Bloggers Will Soon Need To Abide By Corporate Guidelines
Micro Persuasion: "David Farrell, Sun's chief compliance officer, tells Fortune that the company will soon require employees to agree to specific guidelines before starting a weblog."
We Need Better Tools To Track Conversation
I, as many other bloggers, think that the conversation(?) between blogs/people is one of the blogosphere's killer applications. Or it should be. I know this discussion is not new, but I realized once again today that it is an absurd task to try to keep up with the discussion. Maybe, just maybe, I have an idea on a solution.
One example first: At this blog the post about different types of business blogs is one of the most referred to and discussed. You will find 8 comments and 5 Trackbacks if you read the post. But that's not a good illustration of the conversation. A Technorati search shows that the post has 17 links from 16 sources. A Bloglines Citations Search, then? They find 35 pages linking to the post.
Seems like Bloglines is the best tool to use. Let us all do citations links for every post - problem solved? No. I also use FindForwards Backlinks Alert, and they give me another picture, where it quickly becomes obvious that Bloglines does not cover the blogosphere either. Actually, these alerts are the best tool I have used so far to find out if there are discussions going on about my posts. But they does not help you. I get a couple of e-mails per hour with new incoming links, but I have no way (except manually) of attaching that information to the post.
The solution? Who knows. I am no techie, I try to stay as far away from servers and programming as possible. As a user, though, I believe FindForward is on to something. The idea of using backlinks has been discussed earlier, of course, but FindForward is doing it. It is up and running. They store information about your old incoming links to be able to send you an e-mail when a new link is used to access your page. If we in any way could mirror those stored links on our posts... goodbye Trackback.
RSS - Simple But Unintelligent?
Three interesting articles from eWEEK on RSS and its use in organizations.
For example, a relief organization uses RSS internally to efficiently get information out in situations where time is really valuable. But, another article says, "the simplicity of RSS also means that it doesn't have a whole lot of intelligence over its delivery".
I don't know about that last one. I would rather say that a simple basic format is the perfect foundation to build intelligent applications and solutions on. If we just shift focus, from the technology in itself to what you do with it, I think RSS can be intelligent enough.
Link via B-spirit
The Ideal Corporate Blog And Wiki Tool
What would be the perfect social software tool inside the firewall? I guess the real answer is that such a tool will never see the light of day - organizations are not that similar - but the effort to find a close to ideal tool is admirable. At IntraBliki the work has started with defining the requirements.
A Quick Look At Things To Read
Just a roundup of things that are worth mentioning - no time to give much context or commentary today.
- Do you have anything to offer me?
- Can I count on you?
- Will you get it straight?
14 Steps To Your Business Blog
I had a discussion with a friend who works at a corporate communications department. Maybe blogging could be something for us, they said in a meeting, but they didn't know and they weren't sure how to dig deeper into the question. I gave him this list of 14 steps, and I figured it could be interesting here as well. They were thinking about external blogs and that obviously influences this list.
I could add a #0 too: Just do it. Never mind risks, lack of resources, communications strategies. Never mind what you are supposed to do in the blogosphere. It is a new world, a new communication era. And it seems quite easy to get a new job these days...
I'm not sure that would be totally wrong. A lot of good blogs have started that way. But here's the more traditional approach.
1. Start using RSS for news, jobs or press releases
Well, this you should do even if blogging isn't for you. But if you are going to blog you need to feel comfortable with this form of publishing - get used to the fact that you will have, hopefully, a lot of readers that never actually visits your site. For many with a background in traditional publishing (e.g. many communications directors...) this could be worrying.
2. Thoroughly study what a blog is
You have to know blogs to be able to decide on whether or not to start one. And not just "know" them as a reader of 5 or 10 different blogs. You should do rather extensive research. What are the distinctive features of blogs? What blogs are there in your business? What do you think the audience likes or dislikes about them?
With all this done you will still need to find your own tone and niche, and this will depend heavily on who the bloggers are. But you will know what it is like out there.
3. Be specific with purpose
Absolutely no one will be happy if you start a blog because you can. You need, as you would with all other communication channels, be very clear on the purpose.
"We will start a blog because..."
Just remember that a blog may fill other purposes than you are used to. A purpose like "some of our sales people want a less formal and sales focused forum to share their knowledge" is a brilliant start.
4. Ask yourself, do you really need a blog?
Why on earth would you want a blog? For the purpose above maybe a series of seminars would work just fine. If you have done your research and now know your goal, it is time to ask yourself if it's worth it. Do you have the culture of openness and honesty that blogging will demand from you? Are there any business risks, and are you prepared to take them?
5. Ask yourself, do we have the resources?
Just one word: Time.
(If you want more words on this one, see what Gerry McGovern has said about the disadvantages of blogs.)
6. Co-ordinate with other communication channels
Nothing strange here, you would never start a new channel without discussing and outlining its relationship with all the other things you do. If you are going to blog maybe the e-mail newsletter should reference the blog? Or be replaced by it?
7. Who's the blogger?
The Department of Corporate Communications does not blog. No organizational unit does. People working there do. You of course have to find people that wants to, that wishes nothing else but to, blog. In most real life cases I have seen this has actually been the starting point, and those people have been the advocates for the blog in the process we're talking about here.
8. Make a decision on all aspects, features of blogs
Will you allow comments? Will they be moderated by you? Is Trackback a feature to offer? What RSS versions? Atom, too? Categories or not? A blogroll, maybe?
Make sure you know what all these small peculiarities of blogs are and if you think they will help you.
And then you need to take some more important decisions. What will you write about and what is absolutely impossible to write about? Will you for example link to competitors? Tip: If you say no to this, start at #2 again...
9. Choose which tool to use
There's a lot of tools to compare, but if you have done #8 you know what to look for. I hope this will become a good source of information.
10. Create a blogging policy
Again, if you have done #8 you know what to put in this - you can get some guidance from others.
11. Make sure the blogger(s) know blogging
Blogging is a skill. Not a very unique one, but a skill. The blogger must first of all know how to write, and he or she should know how the blogosphere works.
12. Launch quietly
Ideas and fine plans is one thing. But how does it turn out? Are the enthusiastic bloggers good enough to be very visible representatives of your brand?
I recommend you start low-profile. You could even consider to start behind the firewall or with a password protected blog.
13. Start doing subtle PR
Don't issue a press release stating you have a blog. You wouldn't be the first to do it, but it never seems appropriate. There are other means.
14. Success or failure? Decide on the future of your blog
It doesn't take more than two or three months, from my experience, to find out if a blog is good enough to deliver results. Have you been linked to by other blogs? Is anyone commenting? Do you get feedback from your target group?
You also know how much resources the blog really demands by now, which means you have all the information you need to make a long term commitment.
Or just give it up.
Internal Blog Uses
From CEO Bloggers' Club:
"Blog is an individual tool with impact both on the blogger and the reader/commenter. It can act as a filter of captured and evolving knowledge, it is a content management system that is sufficiently simple to be flexible and sufficiently robust to be effective. The features that make a blog an ideal tool for emergent knowledge management is speed, flexibility, interactivity, and ability to spread information outward."
All this (and there's more) is interesting, but maybe a bit too good to be true. Consider for example the fact that many people just don't want to share information or knowledge. Right or wrong, they believe it could threaten their positions. Consider that writing is something many people hate to do, even if it's only a comment. Or consider the bottom-up approach that is fundamental to the author's view and conclusions. This we have been talking about and trying to achieve long before anyone had ever heard the word "blog". Most have failed, not because of shortcomings in their tools but because their corporate cultures don't allow it - no matter what senior management officially says.
Don't get me wrong. I believe that for most organizations blogs will be more used internally than externally. The tool will find it's place. It won't come as easy as the post indicates, that's my point. Anyway, as an idea of how blogs could help your internal collaboration under perfect circumstances, the post is well worth reading.
The Problem Of Unstructured Blogs That Are Hard To Search
Made out of people asks a very relevant question: Can we find a better way to find stuff that might be out there.
The question might seem ordinary and not that exciting. But the discussion goes to the heart of business blogging, especially internal blogging with KM purposes. The author suggests that while external blogging is successful and growing in companies like Microsoft, Sun and Yahoo, their internal blogs tends to fall apart.
The problem is the difficulty of finding important information in old blog posts. Intranet search engines often don't perform very well - and there aren't that many alternatives to searching.
Blogs have made it easy to get stuff into intranets (and the web, the discussion is just as relevant externally) but they don't necessarily make it easy to get stuff out.
I think this discussion is much needed. I like blogs, which you probably have noticed..., but I have one major problem with the format and that is exactly this: They're unstructured to a degree that makes the information useless just a couple of weeks after it's published.
The categories you see in many blogs doesn't help if your blog is big enough. It just gives you 10, 25, 50 unstructured sub-blogs.
I don't claim to have The Answer, but I have one answer to the question asked. I think you have to incorporate the blog format into a more traditional web site if you want it to be an information source and not only a part of the conversation.
That is the way I do it here. I post about many things - sometimes a random thought, sometimes my take on a discussion in another blog. But now and then I find a link or learn something that are relevant to my original idea with CorporateBlogging.Info: To be a basic help for professional communicators that wants to find out more about business blogging, especially from a European perspective. In those cases I also update the more static content of this site (basics, listings, testimonials etc). I have come across many blogs that would have kept me as a reader for much longer if they just had done some good old IA.
UPDATE: If you're interested in this discussion and know German, you should read Blogs stellen Zeit dar. Wikis den Raum. (also see Jim's comment to this post). Jim suggests an "intelligent hybrid of a blog and a wiki".
Blog And Search Tool With Internal Focus
The Nextaris Beta could be an interesting alternative for organizations when it comes to knowledge sharing and blogging.
Search Engine Guide describes Nextaris as "...an initial effort to integrate the various tools we all use in online research. Like other online web research managers, [it] lets you create folders to save cached copies of web pages, and search the content you've saved. There are also tools that allow you to easily publish the content you've found, to a web site or a blog."
I haven't checked it out in detail myself yet, but it seems to integrate many of the functions I would like in an internal blog platform. That is, one solution for external sources and news alerts, document management and organization, blog/web publishing, and messaging on a private network. I think I will give it a try.
Ghost Writers For Hire - Good Or Bad?
According to we make money not art a company called Memo Technique is offering blog ghost writers. I've seen services like this before, but mainly from freelance writers.
Blog ghost writing is controversial. I have said that I believe it could work, but for example Amy Gahran strongly disagrees.
I wrote a comment to Amy's post, and it summarizes my view:
When it comes to the ghostwriting part I actually intended to be a bit provocative - I agree that in general it will be a bad idea (so I fully understand your point of view) but I'm not sure that we can write it off totally just yet. I do some ghostwriting for other purposes than blogs, and when I wrote the post I had one special CEO in mind. Once a month I write 40-50 seconds for him to say in his company's internal radio programme, and having done that for some time nowadays I barely have to talk to him to get it right. I know what he thinks, when he wants to be diplomatic, when he wants to be controversial, how he says things etc etc. In a relationship like that maybe ghostwriting a blog would work. In exceptional cases, that is.
SEO Analysis For Your Blog
One subject I never write about here is Search Engine Optimization. But it is a fact that blogging and SEO go hand in hand, and without actually knowing I suspect that more than one blog has been started with the main (maybe only) purpose of improving a site's ranking.
To be honest I think that the SEO business is a pretty dirty business with many strange offers, and my basic advice to clients is always "produce really good content, avoid some usual mistakes in the code, link and get linked to". Nine times out of ten, that does it.
But even if I don't like the business very much, SEO as such can be, well, funny. Here are the tools I use to fine tune the sites I'm working with.
Top Ten Google Analysis
An indepth comparison, including both Google and Yahoo, between your site (if you want to) and the top 10 search results for a specific search phrase. Requires that you get your own Google API key.
GoogleRankings.com
A fast and easy way to check your site's ranking in Google.
YahooSearchRankings.com
As above, but with Yahoo.
Marketleap
Three different tools:
Link Popularity Check (..."the total number of links or "votes" that a search engine has found for your website.")
Search Engine Saturation
(..."the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain.")
Keyword Verification
(..."if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword.")
Promoting Your Blog: Basics From Blogger
Biz Stone who works at Google has written a long, basic article about blog promotion. If you don't use Blogger you can skip the first part but there's still plenty of advice.
Blog Publishing Platform Reviews
Rick at Business Blog Consulting has started his series of blog publishing platform reviews. The first to be reviewed is Wordpress.
With any luck this could be the source to go to for organizations about to choose platform. Just one tip: Write summary's. I'd sure like to read a paragraph or two in the beginning that highlights the most interesting stuff from all the questions that are answered.
Real Estate Blogs Big In Japan
Woke up this morning trying to find a way to understand Japanese. Needless to say, it didn't work. But with the as always absurd help of Babelfish I managed to get a grasp of Fudou3's blog, I think.
The author has used my suggestion of six types of business blogs to classify real estate blogs in Japan. There's around twenty of them on the list - among them several examples of blogs that seems to be more sales focused than other real estate blogs I've seen. If you're in that business it's well worth to take a look, even if your experience of Japanese - as mine - is limited to trying to get Internet Explorer to show the right set of characters...
The Blogger On The Payroll
Last week I arranged a breakfast seminar on business/organizational blogging. The audience were all highly qualified communicators but new to the concept of blogging. As I expected, one of the discussions focused on how to set up rules for employee blogging. Not in an old, command-control kind of way, but a set of rules that would make top management less worried. I think this is the most important question to answer when corporate blogging moves beyond the early adopters, beyond the evangelists.
In The Blogger on the Payroll ClickZ interviews many of the early adopters (Microsoft, Sun, Groove). The article makes a good overview on the subject.
Sun's Tim Bray, who has published a blogging policy, summarizes his point of view:
"Obviously there's going to be some tension between the desire to reduce the risk, and the desire to unleash your employees' creativity," Bray said. "My personal recommendation is to get an activist and impatient COO on the case flogging people to just get it done."
In the end, he says, it's worth it. Bray says Sun's staff blogs not only put a face on the company, but also build its knowledge capital.
Interview: CEO Bloggers' Club Initiator
The CEO Blogger's Club, started just over a week ago, is beginning to find members. I think the idea is interesting, so I did a short interview with the French initiator Guillaume du Gardier of PR Planet (corporate site/blog).
In the Welcome post some of Guillaume's thoughts are outlined. The club is about sharing experiences.
- This is really a place to share daily corporate blogging practice, either for external or internal purposes, conducted by people leading their companies and willing to help other CEOs taking their first step in the blogosphere, Guillaume writes in a e-mail reply to my questions.
Do you think that CEOs that blog have common difficulties, challenges or possibilities considering their position?
- The position of CEOs gives them the power to decide which orientation we could give to this new channel. The CEO has the power to decide if he wants to put his brand on the scene and if he is ready to be directly connected to its public.
Guillaume is convinced that blogs are a positive step to take for most companies.
- I wanted to find a way to bring this awareness to CEOs who might not be informed on blogs, or to share daily experiences with those who are bloggers already.
I understand the club as both an information service and a network. Is one of these perspectives more important than the other to you?
- The online resource is available to everyone, easy to access or develop, and this must be the first priority. If we also can have an opportunity to meet a few times during the year, it will be a chance to go deeper, to meet each other and have discussions focused on specific issues.
I'm a CEO blogger myself (at www.wpr.se). I think it would be fun to join, but the meetings makes it difficult. It's both expensive and time consuming to travel abroad, and for most of us blogging is an experiment that still doesn't generate revenue. I think many blogging CEOs feel the same. How important are the meetings IRL to your idea?
- The blog is the most important in this project, the online resource is the main objective. Meetings IRL are for those who can, who want more than just online meetings. This is optional, additional.
Thanks Guillame, and good luck. Those of you that want to join just leave a comment on the blog. This informal application of membership seems very appropriate for a blog club, and to me the concept sounds interesting. I just hope the club will get the international profile Guillame intends.
Why Corporate Blogs Could Fail
Media Guerrilla: Corporate Blogging, Watch That 3rd Step...
"The first step is simply getting companies to recognize the fact that they can no longer afford to ignore the impact and influence of micro media. The second step -- and arguably the most important one -- is to begin listening to what people are saying. Finally, the third and most tempting, yet challenging, step is for a company to engage in the conversation. In theory, if a company can properly execute steps one and two, step three shouldn't be, technically speaking, that difficult.
Here's the problem: Companies, particularly the PR and marketing folk within them, see the 'buzz building' potential with new mediums like blogs and thus they skip the first two steps and go strait to step three: engaging."
Small Business Blog Reviews
Small Business Trends are regularly reviewing blogs "written by people who are entrepreneurs or small business owners..." or blogs that "focus on topics related to small and midsize business and entrepreneurs".
They've been doing it since February and now it's a list of almost 30 reviews, where the latest is Lip Sticking, a blog about "Smart Marketing to Women Online".
Relevant And Compelling Market Communications
Advertising executives are worried. TV ads may be loosing their impact, and new technology gives consumers the power to skip ads entirely.
Blogs are not discussed in the article, of course. They shouldn't be considering the exec's focus on mass markets which will rule blogs out for many years, maybe forever.
But one of them states this: "People are receptive to it [advertising] as long as it's relevant. If it's not, they'll just walk by." Another says "We've got to make our messages interesting and compelling". A third ad firm exec claims to be "...increasingly interested in alternatives where people already have control, like the Internet...". Isn't this - to some extent - what blogs are delivering for businesses? In that case, doesn't blogs give smaller businesses a tool for niche markets that the big ones would love to have?
This would fit perfectly with what I believe: Corporate blogs aren't triggering a more open and honest conversation between companies and its customers, they're the logical result of a wish and need for this (from all parties). And that leaves us with a millon dollar question: What will the mass market equivalent of blogs be?
Link via Researcher.
Weblogs: Nodes Of Participation In A Global Context?
This is an academic paper (pdf) about the growth of blogging from a PhD candidate in Stockholm, Sweden. There's no news, neither in facts nor theories, but it is a good summary especially regarding the history of weblogs.
There's also in interesting question asked in the summary: Are there differences in the way different language communities conceptualize and use weblogs? With any luck we'll see more research on this.
Link via cyDome.
Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
Just a quick tip. Blog Business World points to the most comprehensive list of blog directory and RSS submission sites I have seen.
It's a few months old but without doubt still good enough to be a related link on my "Publish Blogs?" page.
A Sober View On Blogging For Business
It's easy to become enthusiastic about corporate blogging. The potential, the promise, is exciting. But it is just a tool, and probably a tool that is more demanding in a business environment than other communication tools. Stay sober, you could summarize these two posts. But watch out, I might add, you don't want to miss the party...
Engage: Be real or go home
"If the media calls with a question and your first response to them is 'I have to run this by corporate communications/marketing/the boss before I can tell you anything,' then do yourself a favor and don't set up a weblog."
writelife: Don't go there - corporate blogging
"Corporate culture as it's manifest in most companies is so profoundly the opposite of being straight forward, direct and plain speaking that even when people within that world make a genuine attempt to be direct and honest, they can't."
Preparing For Tomorrow's Workplaces
These are the people we will be working with in a decade or two.
I look forward to it.
From Educause Review: "This last group of students, eight or so at a time, fire up their browsers and log into their cyberportfolios, a publication space that Principal Mario Asselin calls a "virtual extension of the classroom". This virtual space is composed of three sets of weblogs, or blogs: a classroom Web space, where announcements are displayed and work of common interested is posted; a public, personal communication zone, where students post the results of their work or reflection; and a private personal space, reserved for students' thoughts and teacher guidance."