Blogs are becoming essential for business. Steve Rubel is one of our publishing partners who is on the cutting edge of this marketing and communications revolution. Below are comments and pointers by Steve that will help you use blogs to enhance your business success.
Blogs Mean Business
Blogs are here to stay. At least, that’s the growing consensus. How can blogs help you promote your thoughts or business? Share your reactions and insights at WebProWorld.
Blogging as Easy as 1, 2, 3
Thinking about blogging? Here’s a new site that makes this all as easy as 1, 2, 3 – it’s called Ready, Set, Blog and it’s from Mindsay, a blogging platform. They even have a blog on blogging.
JupiterResearch Blogs Reap Business
Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler writes that since the company’s analysts started writing blogs two years ago, they have had gained several sales leads as because readers have been impressed by the analysts’ comments.
Bloglines’ Rapid Growth Gives It Great Power
Using publicly available data from Bloglines, Infoworld’s John Udell analyzed the subscription trends of several major tech blogs (see chart at left). Udell says he’s really not sure how to interpret this because the data suggests that while growth is constant, the rate of growth varies episodically. Despite the nuances, here’s what I clearly gleaned – more folks are subscribing to blogs via RSS and they’re reading them on Bloglines.
As of this writing, more than one third of my 1200 FeedBurner feed readers (420 subscribers) are viewing my blog through Bloglines (see chart at right) – and this number is growing rapidly. As much as I would love to think this ascent is due to what I write on my blog, I actually believe it is because Bloglines is attracting users in droves and is growing like a beanstalk. I have heard from some subscribers that they are ditching their desktop RSS readersFb_1 in favor of Bloglines’ simplicity. As much as I love FeedDemon, I too have switched exclusively to Bloglines.
However, with great growth often comes great power. Could Bloglines one day exert the kind of control that Google does? I bet in the near future they might. Especially if they need start monetizing their users or they get swallowed up by a bigger fish.
Frank Bajak to Big Media – Ignore Blogs at Your Peril
AP tech editor Frank Bajak: The sovereignty of Big Journalism is eroding.
Blogs Come of Age as a News Source
SF Chronicle: Weblogs come of age as a news source (via IWantMedia)
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
