Product Description

At first, the business community saw blogging as an ideal marketing tool for free agents and entrepreneurs who needed a cheap way to get their message out. That was then. Now, the big guys are waking up to the amazing power of a great blog to enhance their company's communication both internally and externally. However, as with most elements of business, the key word is great. As online consultant Debbie Weil makes clear in this timely and accessible book, a corporate blog that is boring or confusing is worse than none at all. Using an informal, jargon-free style, The Corporate Blogging Book explains how to create a blog for your business that's engaging, smart, and, most important, likely to grow an audience. All aspects of corporate blogging are explored here, and all of your important questions answered, such as: How much time will it take? What are the legal risks? Who in my company should blog? What are the best corporate blogs out there? If you want your company to survive in the modern business world, The Corporate Blogging Book is an essential resource.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #258690 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Synopsis
At first, the business community saw blogging as an ideal marketing tool for free agents and entrepreneurs who needed a cheap way to get their message out. That was then. Now, the big guys are waking up to the amazing power of a great blog to enhance their company's communication both internally and externally. However, as with most elements of business, the key word is great. As online consultant Debbie Weil makes clear in this timely and accessible book, a corporate blog that is boring or confusing is worse than none at all. Using an informal, jargon-free style, The Corporate Blogging Book explains how to create a blog for your business that's engaging, smart, and, most important, likely to grow an audience. All aspects of corporate blogging are explored here, and all of your important questions answered, such as: How much time will it take? What are the legal risks? Who in my company should blog? What are the best corporate blogs out there? If you want your company to survive in the modern business world, The Corporate Blogging Book is an essential resource.

About the Author
Debbie Weil is a popular speaker, marketing consultant, and publisher of the award-winning e-newsletter WordBiz Report. She has appeared in print and on television numerous times to explain how successful corporate blogging really works. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews

How to communicate "the inside story, the pulse, the personality of your company"

Frankly, I am astonished by the rapid growth of blogging and, especially, by the rapidly increasing adoption of blogging as a primary (not exclusive) medium for corporate communications, both internal and external. There are several dozen excellent books now in print that explains this phenomenon (Debbie Weil identifies many of them in her "Recommended Reading" section) and this book is certainly one of them. As I began to read it, I was immediately reminded of an incident decades ago when Vince Lombardi (the new head coach of the Green Bay Packers) met for the team for the first time and announced that he would begin with basics. He held up a leather spheroid and said, "Gentlemen, this is a football." It is widely reported that Max Magee then responded, "Coach, could you please slow down? You're going too fast."

Wisely, Weil assumes that her reader knows nothing about blogging. (That is probably true of many, if not most of those who read her book.) She begins with the basics. In fact, in the first chapter, she responds to the "Top Twenty Questions About Corporate Blogging." At this point, I presume to add that almost everything she says about corporate blogging is relevant to non-corporate blogging, with the obvious exceptions being information and suggestions with regard to creating an institutional blog mechanism. But even so, such mechanisms seek to attract and involve human beings and must thus be designed and administered with a full accommodation of basics.

With all due respect to the value of the FAQ section, each reader will have other questions and Weill is well aware of that as she begins her narrative with a "quick romp through the corporate blogosphere" (i.e. background and early development), addresses common fears about blogging (e.g. allocation of resources, contingent legal liability, loss of control.... "the mother of all fears"), determination of ROB (i.e. return on blog), tools and technology needed, and "making the case for blogging to the boss." Along the way, Weil includes (in Chapter 7) her "Top Ten Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog." Then in the final chapter, she shares her thoughts about "what's next," followed by a "Bonus Resources" section that, all by itself, is worth much more than the cost of the book. One man's opinion, its value is increased by a factor of at least ten if the material is absorbed and digested within the frame-of-reference established by the ten chapters that precede it. Suggestion: Read the entire book in chapter sequence, highlighting whichever passages catch your eye; then, after reading Chapter 10, set the book aside for a few days before you focus on the "Bonus Resources" section.

Many readers will especially of Weill's provision of summaries of key points made by others such as a list of nine ways to use an internal blog suggested by Shel Holz (Pages 31-32) and the "Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines" (Pages 165-168) that, according to Weill, make clear "what the business reason is for encouraging [Nelson] employees to blog: to open the door and offer a peak inside one of the world's largest publishers." There is also an abundance of real-world examples throughout the narrative that illustrate the given key point, be it a "do" or a "don't."

Only after having read and then re-read this book did I conclude that, at least for me, the most valuable material is provided in Chapter 4, "A Baker's Dozen: 12 Plus 1 Ways to Use a Corporate Blog." Once again, as she does in previous and subsequent chapters, Weill inserts a brief and insightful excerpt from another source: Hugh Macleod's response to the question, "What's a Global Microbrand?" By the time the reader has arrived at #13, she or he should not be surprised by Weill's assertion that "blogs are the new corporate Web site" and there are still 140 more pages ahead that offer additional evidence of how effective corporate blogging for all organizations (regardless of size or nature) can help them to increase and enhance relationships between and among all their stakeholders.

Obviously, it remains for corporate bloggers to (a) determine for themselves which of the 13 are most appropriate, (b) cross-rank their importance to achieving the given business objectives, (c) create an electronic infrastructure, and then (d) broaden and deepen internal and/or external participation, with primary emphasis on convenience in terms of both connectivity and interactivity. If asked to select a single source for information and counsel on how to introduce and then sustain effective corporate blogging, it would be Debbie Weil's book.

excellent
A very sensible and practical book for everyone who would like to have their own blog within the world of work. It tells you how to write your blog, who you should write it for, what you might want to put on it and why and hundreds of other useful things. Blogs are about communicating and the author suggests that in a few years every company will have their own blog. Definitely worthwhile reading for everyone who wants to be ahead of competitors.