After weeks or months of preparation, you think you’re ready to launch your business blog. You’ve found the theme, you’ve assembled the blogging team, the software platform has been tested internally and everything looks good. But think twice before officially launching your blog. You might be surprised later. Before telling the world that there is a new blog in town, here are some essential rules to remember.

Aviva Directory is a paid general Web directory which has been launched in 2005 by Jeffrey Behrendt, in Ottawa, Canada — at least if I’ve found the correct information. It has recently published 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch. Some of the tips mentioned there are crucial while others can be forgotten, mainly because they’re not specifically intended for business blogs. Their first tip can be applied to all kinds of blogs, but it is particularly important for corporate blogs.

Connect with your readers through an about page and welcome message. One of the best ways to make a lasting impact is to connect on a personal level with your readers. That means letting them know who you are and what your background is.I totally agree with this one. And you should do it. It’s always frustrating to have to click on a dozen of links before finding who writes a blog — if you’re interested of course.

It’s interesting that Aviva Directory — which is not a blog — doesn’t show the same transparency that it claims is essential: try to find who’s behind the site and you’ll see what I mean. But let’s move to an even more important advice.

Don’t get seen naked: Never launch a blog with fewer than 5 posts. In the blogosphere you typically get just one shot at impressing a visitor or fellow blogger. Too many new bloggers throw up two posts and then start working on promotion. In the world of blogging, you are selling yourself and your writing. If you can’t give people a fully dressed picture of what your blog is all about and what type of writing will be on it, then why should they throw a link your way, or subscribe to your RSS feed?

In fact even large companies forget this. This is why I’m usually waiting more than a week before reviewing a corporate blog after its official birth. But many people are not as patient as I am, and will never return to your blog if there are no valid or interesting contents.

The next tips are related to your RSS feeds. But let’s look only at the first one.

Make sure a link to your RSS feed is available above the fold. Though they won’t help your AdSense revenues much, subscribers are the lifeblood of any successful blog. These devotees are often the ones providing you with regular comments, and are far more likely to be webmasters themselves (meaning more links). It should be obvious to anyone launching a blog, but it’s amazing how many new bloggers do not make a link to their RSS feed readily available.

I totally agree with the importance of showing to your readers how to subscribe to your RSS feed. However, these RSS feeds come in various flavors, and the blogging platforms are not all very friendly with you when you need to find a link to your RSS feed.

But I disagree with Aviva about AdSense: this might be somewhat important for a personal blog, but is irrelevant for a business blog. What is instead important is to subscribe to your RSS feed yourself to see how the outside world can see you your blog. Will you include your full posts on only some excerpts in your RSS feeds? I’ll revisit this subject in a full note one day.

Let’s skip the tips about “social bookmarking” or “getting networked” and move to the “link building” section. The article says you should “submit your blog to blog directories and to general web directories such as DMOZ and Aviva.” I don’t know about Aviva, but if it’s important to tell DMOZ or Yahoo! that you have a new blog, it’s like sending a message in a bottle: you’ll have to wait for months before these directories accept you. And if they don’t, they will not tell you.

There is one big tip missing from the Aviva list: be sure to ping all the major blogging directories — and the search engines — when you post a new note. This is usually easily done through options available in your blogging software.

These are some essential tips but you might have additional ones not mentioned here. Do you have some other tips for launching a blog? Please tell me about them.

Sources: Aviva Directory, Ottawa, October 23, 2006

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• Blogs
• Business

Two weeks ago, Northeastern University, Massachusetts, released the results of a survey about what makes a successful corporate blog? This study was done in collaboration with Backbone Media Inc. and looked at the factors that contribute to a successful business blog. Not surprisingly, these factors include transparency, lots of time and a company’s ability to engage in a dialogue with its customers. Another key factor is the blogger’s writing style who has to be at the same time entertaining and personal. But read more…

This “Blogging Success Study” has been conducted by Northeastern University Professor Walter Carl and his students.

The research team interviewed twenty corporate bloggers from companies of varied size and industry, and asked each blogger a series of standardized questions. Only bloggers who had been blogging for over one year and considered their blogging efforts successful were eligible to participate.

The team selected blogs from Adobe, Marqui, Microsoft and Stonyfield Farm among others. Here is a link to the — long — full report.

After doing all the interviews, the research team identified five factors for success.

• Culture: If a company has particular cultural traits worth revealing or a bad reputation it wants to repudiate, blogging can be an attractive option.
• Transparency: Critical to establishing credibility and trust with an audience. People want to see an honest portrayal of a company.
• Time: It takes a lot of time to set up, research and write a quality blog. Companies need to identify a person who has the time or whose schedule is freed up to make the time.
• Dialogue: A company’s ability and willingness to engage in a dialogue with their customer base about topics that the customer base is interested in is critical to its blogging success.
• Entertaining writing style and personalization: A blogger’s writing style and how much they are willing to reveal about their life, experience and opinions brings human interest to a blog, helps build a personal connection with readers and will keep people reading.

Here is a quote from the full report about this personalization factor.

The bloggers in the study suggested that bloggers should write to entertain their readers and not just to give an opinion or inform. Success in part then can be said to come from the personality of the blogger. The personal writing style of a blogger will influence the interaction and reading habits of the audience.

And this “personality” can stem from humor, unique personal experience or passion expressed for their topic. The more entertaining a blogger is, the more captivating and riveting the content, the higher the chance for blogging success. In addition, attempts by a blogger to conduct a dialogue with their readership, other bloggers and the community at large will have a positive effect on the success of a blog.

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I also want to emphasize that it takes time and dedication to build a good business blog. Of course, you need time to write posts, but you also need time to reply to comments from readers, monitor other blogs, keep up with the latest industry news and build relationships with other bloggers within a community.

This study also looks at key issues which need to be solved before launching a business blog. These include having clear blogging goals in advance and practicing with an internal blog before going external.

As I noted above, there are no big surprises in this study. But it’s still good to hear that a business blog needs some real effort — and money — to be successful.

Sources: Northeastern University news release, November 2, 2006; and various websites

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• Blogs
• Business

It took me a while to reply to François Lamotte, from Shoob, who wanted to know how various bloggers were writing their posts. He asked us to define five key points — or principles. Personally, I have only one principle when I write, be it a report, a presentation, a personal e-mail, a postcard or a post on a blog. And it is only three words long: respect the reader. Of course, writing a blog and an academic paper are two different things. So read more to discover my personal guidelines. UPDATE (November 8, 2006): you can read the French version of these guidelines in “Comment blogue Roland Piquepaille?” published by François on Shoob.

Choose an interesting subject

For my blogs about emerging trends (ZDNet or Primidi), I usually select a subject which has not yet be treated by the mainstream media or blogs with large readership. And I’m choosing only one subject daily on more than a thousand articles that I read — partially or totally.

For the ones focused about why companies should use blogs (Blogs for Companies or ITtoolbox), my selecting process is slightly different. For example, if I want to write about the latest corporate blog launched by Intel, I’m waiting until there are enough posts to see if the blog has a future or not — according to me. Being the first to write about this blog is not interesting for me — and my readers (read this for more details).

In both cases, as I’m publishing “knowledge blogs,” I usually avoid to write about subjects which already have abundantly commented on.

Find references and pictures

Even if some bloggers say they’re dead, press releases still exist. And the mainstream media also are still alive — and well, at least for some. But often, and probably because they have to face the competition of some influent bloggers, news releases and press articles have a tendency to rush. Sometimes, they mention a researcher’s name or the name of the journal which published his latest work. When I decide to publish a post about a specific subject, I’m looking for the exact references and even previous publications from this researcher or his lab. I’m also searching for illustrations which will allow the reader to better understand what are the concepts behind a specific research work.

Check all the facts

Even if you’re reading very well established newspapers or magazines, it’s better to look at possible mistakes and to double check if their numbers are right. Like when the French news magazine L’Express wrote a few months ago that IBM had 130,000 employees: at this time, IBM employed 330,000 persons (read this for more details).

When I decided two days ago to write that an American astronomer was envisioning to build a ’sun umbrella’ to protect us from the global warming consequences, a project which could cost as much as $2,5 trillion, I searched for several confirmations. First, I wanted to know if I was not dreaming, and then, I really needed to validate such an incredible information. After checking if the information was true, I wrote a note which has now been picked in a way or another by influential blogs, such as Engadget, Defense Tech or Slashdot (read this for more details).

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Pay attention to presentation

If an interesting content is essential for a blog, the way the information is presented is also crucial. Even if a blog post is considered as less formal than a report to your CEO doesn’t mean that you have to ignore grammar rules. Below is a non-exhaustive list of what I’m checking before publishing a post on my blogs.

• Find a “good” title for the post (read “How to find a good title for a note“)
• Summarize the note for inclusion in various news feeds
• Spell check the text (read “Check Your Text for Formal Errors“)
• Check syntax, grammar and punctuation
• Check that all the links mentioned in the post are accessible — at least when I’m publishing the note
• Mention all the sources for the post
• Indicate the “weight” of some documents (animations and videos for example)

And always think about the potential reader

I guess you already have understood that I’m thinking about you when I’m publishing a note. Even after 4 1/2 years of blog writing, I’m still only publishing about things that passionate me — and which might interest you. This process led me to have friends all over the world. And if one day I’m getting bored, you’ll feel it. And I’ll stop blogging.

Sources: Roland Piquepaille, November 6, 2006; and various websites

You’ll find related stories by following the links below.

• Blogs
• Business
• Personal

Last week, I mentioned here a very young business blog directory. But how do you find the corporate blog of your favorite company if it’s not listed in this directory? There are many ways to find if a company has a corporate blog, as reminds us Easton Ellsworth in 10 Quick Ways to Find Corporate Blogs. But read more to discover other tips and directories.

Ellsworth’s tip #1 is obvious: ‘Use Google to search the company’s website for “blog” and variants (weblog, blogs, etc.). e.g. Honda: [site:honda.com blog].’ Please note that this last query limits the results to pages belonging to the site ‘honda.com.’

Personally, I prefer to search for a company name on both Technorati and Google Blog Search. Using this second service, you can reduce the amount of results by successively searching for ‘honda’, ‘honda blog’, ‘honda corporate blog’ and ‘honda “corporate blog”‘ (without the single quotes around the query).

If you specifically want to know if a U.S. Fortune 500 has a corporate blog, you can look at two Wiki-based directories.

The first one is maintained by Socialtext, the company headed by Ross Mayfield. Here is a link to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. There is a limitation: only one blog is listed for the companies appearing in this index. However, it still can give you an entry point inside a company.

The second directory is brand new and has been initiated by Easton Ellsworth who writes for several blogs, including Business Blogwire. Here is a link to this Fortune 500 Blog Project. You can participate to this collective effort if you wish. So far, this project is not so easy to navigate. For example, if you go to the Project page, you have access to the list of companies, but not directly to their corporate blogs. The only way I’ve found to know if this directory contains a corporate blog for a company is to use the search engine on the left part of all pages. But I guess the navigation process will improve in coming days.

Now, do you know if similar efforts exist in other parts of the world, especially in Europe and more specifically in France? If yes, please post your discoveries below.

Sources: Easton Ellsworth, Business Blogwire, October 10, 2006; and various websites

You’ll find related stories by following the links below.

• Blogs
• Business

Imagine that your company wants to start a business blog. But who will write the contents? Who will answer comments and build the community? Maybe a member of your staff can do it. But chances are that she has already too much work. And does he write well? Can she find new ideas for daily posts? Is there another solution to build a better blog? You bet. Simply, as reports WebProNews in “Professional Blogging: Effective Outsourcing,” just hire a professional blogger. But read more…

But what is professional blogging?

Professional blogging, as a paid writer for other blogs, has a very bright future. Writing blog posts for other blogs is truly a win-win situation for everyone involved.

The professional blogger gets paid to post, and the blog owner has postings magically appear at predetermined intervals. This is especially true for the growing number of company business blogs that appear almost daily.

Of course, it will cost you — slightly — more money that if some of your employees were writing the blog. But with all the other things they have to do, who knows if there will be a good post tomorrow?

And you’ll probably be rewarded sooner than you think by hiring someone not working for your organization.

A business blog increases company revenue over time through the marketing and relationship building power of the blog. As a result of the additional financial gains, hiring a professional blog writer or team makes financial sense for many business owners and managers. The fees charges by the blogging professional could be much less than the added revenue, the cost of hiring an additional staff member for blogging, or from the time saving from not reassigning blogging duties to a current staff member.

And don’t forget that a professional blogger can do many other things, such as relieve you from the technical aspects of blogging — yes, they exist — or train your staff to maintain the blog in the future. Still, outsourcing at least the initial steps of your blog is certainly a wise solution.

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In addition to what writes WebProNews, there are some other things to consider. First, you need to find a professional blogger who understands your business and can use the language of your industry. And second, you need to find one in the first place.

For example, in France, I don’t know many professional bloggers. There is Sophie Kune who writes Vous les hommes for Celio, a French-based chain of men’s apparel. Of course, I’m also writing Emerging Technology Trends for ZDNet.com, part of CNET Networks, Inc.

There are obviously lots of PR or ad agencies that can help you. But without starting a polemic, these agencies can only build blogs serving as sales assistants, not the ones you’re dreaming of and that will lead your customers to talk with you.

So if you want to build a successful company blog, hire a professional blogger. Or simply contact me.

Source: Wayne Hurlbert, for WebProNews, September 12, 2006

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• Blogs
• Business

So you have a blog and you’re happy with it. You like the layout, the fonts and the overall presentation. But have you thought that a professional blog, like any other publication from your company, needed to follow some rules and had to include some mandatory elements? This is true that the templates provided by the software providers give you lots of choices. But you have to think that a company blog is a business project. And these software companies will not help you to build a good design map. Here are some tips about what you should think about before starting a new blog — or revamping one of your existing ones. But read more…

I’ve enrolled two bloggers from New Zealand to help me for this. Let’s start with a chart provided by a CAD designer ‘named’ RobiNZ Blog (Credit: RobiNZ).

Does your blog follow these design rules? I have to say that mine doesn’t conform completely to them.

Now, let’s turn to Rachel Cunliffe who listed several steps for designing a professional blog in this post. Here is a summary of her ideas — and mine.

• Decide with your customer what is the real purpose of his blog
• Design a layout and tweak the design of the blogging templates to accommodate his requests
• Revisit your design after a month or two according to the comments received, both from your customer and from the readers
• And never forget to check — and acknowledge — your errors!

These are essential steps in my opinion. Do I miss something? Please let me know.

Source: Rachel Cunliffe and RobiNZ, New Zealand, March 2006

You’ll find related stories by following the links below.

• Blogs
• Ecommerce
• Internet

In The 12 reasons why UK businesses don’t blog, the UK firm E-consultancy.com looks at why businesses and brands are reluctant to use blogs. Many of these top reasons are valid for other countries as well. For example, you might be the CEO and be afraid that your employees start to write inappropriate things. Or simply, your PR agency or yourself don’t understand what a business blog would bring to your company. But read more for my favorite reasons…

Chris Lake, the author, writes that to the contrary to what happens in the US, UK and European marketers are ignoring blogs. And he decided to find why. Here are two of these reasons.

You think it is too risky to allow your colleagues to write blog posts.

Maybe it is. But it probably isn’t, with appropriate guidance and a little prior training in the arts of SEO and copywriting.

You set the guidelines, the subject matter, the overall content framework. They will abide by those rules, because that’s what employees are generally good at (the ones who aren’t good at obeying rules tend to become ex-employees rather quickly).

Well, this is pretty straightforward. But let’s jump to the final possible motive for not starting a business blog.

You think blogging isn’t right for your business.

You might be right. But at least be aware of the benefits of blogging before you make this call. Remember that you do not have to talk exclusively about your business on your blog, nor give away any trade secrets. Nobody cares that you got a new printer for your office, and that it makes a whirring noise that is annoying everybody. They do care about what you have to say about subjects relevant to your business, your products, your policies…

Lake also links to a list of British corporate/brand blogs compiled by Suw Charman from Corante.

What do you think of these reasons for avoiding business blogs? Are they valid in your country? Do you know about additional ones preventing a company or a brand to start a blog?

Source: Chris Lake, for E-consultancy.com, July 5, 2006

This is one of the conclusions of a survey published by Nora Ganim Barnes, from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Her report, Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere (PDF format, 60 pages, 1.32 MB) suggests that blogs will make or break your business. Here are the major — and somewhat unsurprising — conclusions of this report which was conducted with the help of of 74 business bloggers: Blogs take time and commitment; Blogs must be part of a plan; A blog is a conversation; Transparency, authenticity, and focus are good, but bland is bad.

Before going any further, here is the introduction of this long — but very interesting — report.

Blogs will make or break your business. They have the power to disseminate information and host global conversations on any topic. Every publication from Business Week, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal […] warns businesses that blogging is not an optional endeavor. Those that don’t will not survive.

As it’s pretty difficult to summarize such a dense report, I’ve decided to include only two images extracted from this survey. The first one shows you how much time a successful business blogger spends on his/her blog on a average day (Credit: Nora Ganim Barnes).

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This second diagram is even more interesting because it tells you that the vast majority of the bloggers interviewed for this survey don’t see any downside for having a blog — except that they spend lots of time to manage it(Credit: Nora Ganim Barnes).

And from the conclusions of this must-read report, here is a short quote from the author which summarizes her thoughts.

Blogging takes time, commitment, and honesty. In return connections are made that are personal and strong. Blogs are not a fad. They are no longer even an option. Those businesses that choose to remain outside this online conversation, will be sidelined. Eventually they will become extinct.

Do you agree with these conclusions? Does your company or organization have a blog? And if not, why? Please tell me what you think.

Source: Nora Ganim Barnes, Chancellor Professor of Marketing, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, June 2006

In its last issue, BusinessWeek Magazine carries an article named Polluting The Blogosphere which announces — and heavily criticizes — a new ’service’ offered to bloggers, PayPerPost. The system is easy. As a blogger, you open an account with this service. And you’ll get paid for mentioning their customers in your posts. But there is a catch: you don’t have to write that you are getting paid for this. Is this honest? Not really. Would you lose your credibility for a couple of bucks? I doubt, but read more…

Here are two short paragraphs from the BusinessWeek article.

Ted Murphy, who founded a Tampa-based interactive ad agency called MindComet, also runs a side business that pays bloggers to write nice things about corporate sponsors — without unduly worrying about whether or not bloggers disclose these arrangements to readers. (A scan of relevant blog searches strongly suggests that, often, they don’t.)

Murphy is launching PayPerPost.com, which will automate such hookups between advertisers and bloggers and thus codify a new frontier of product placement. Advertisers pay to post details about their “opportunity,” specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they’ll pay only for positive mentions. Bloggers who abide by the rules get paid; heavily trafficked blogs may command premium rates.

Since Friday, the arrival of this new service was very heavily commented — and widely condemned — by the blogosphere. Here is a comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick, “PayPerPost.com offers to sell your soul” (TechCrunch, June 30, 2006).

There does not appear to be any requirement that the payment for coverage be disclosed. There is a requirement that PayPerPost.com must approve your post before you are paid. Wow.

In “How to kill blogs,” Rafe Needleman, from CNET News.com, concurs.

This is a bad, bad, bad thing. It’s hard enough for bloggers and professional journalists to maintain their integrity as it is. Even an unsubstantiated rumor of impropriety can destroy a writer. And PayPerPost casts a pall of doubt over everybody.

PayPerPost doesn’t disclose how much it’s going to pay bloggers to write — advertise? — about products. But I bet it will be peanuts. So will you use such a service to make some quick bucks and destroy your credibility? I won’t.

Source: Jon Fine, BusinessWeek Magazine, July 10, 2006 issue; and other references

I was reading this morning that the editor of a teenager magazine in Australia started a blog last year. And now, Dolly magazine’s editor Bronwyn McCahon relies on her blog, and not on her web site, to maintain strong ties with her community of 14-to-17-year-old readers. And as readers wanted more interactivity, she added SMS and other mobile ways to continue to grow this community. But read more…

Here are some of the discoveries McCahon made after starting the Dolly’s blog.

SMS and the internet are the “backbone of communication” to her target 14-to-17-year-old readers. Building an online community around the Dolly brand is also an opportunity for marketers, Ms McCahon says.

She adds that this market is so competitive that you need to find new ways to capture the minds of these versatile readers.

“With a teen market, there is so much competition for their time and money that it makes sense to access them at every point. A sponsor event might be in the magazine, on the website and the blog and in an SMS update so advertisers get a complete package. They’ll see straight through a straight sell, but if there’s something in it for them like a discount on underwear, the readers say, ‘Cool, Bron, thanks’.”

So McCahon decided to use the tools of our mobile society.

Readers can also sign up to a “mobile club” that distributes marketing tools such as discount vouchers. Dolly will soon roll out a more sophisticated mobile portal. “This generation will text their friends or (send a) picture message about their purchase,” McCahon says. “The power of SMS is incredible.”

And some marketing specialists are going even further.

Matthew Costello, co-founder of mobile marketing company 5th Finger, says marketers and brands are demanding “three-screen” marketing: strategies with television, internet and mobile elements. “They know the consumer may spend time in front of the TV or flicking through a magazine, or on their phone on public transport, and they don’t want to be there in a disparate and disorganised way,” he says.

So will the text-only blog disappear? Will we have all to endorse such ‘multi-screen’ marketing strategies for our blogs? Time will tell, but I’d happy to know what you think.

Source: Nick Miller, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, June 20, 2006