Article: Yahoo advocates blogging for small businesses

The author of this article writes:

Despite blogging's popularity among individuals, Yahoo Inc. finds that many small companies still require convincing that these online journals can help their business. 

Yahoo in December struck separate partnerships with blog publishing providers Six Apart Ltd. and WordPress to offer their services for free to small businesses that use Yahoo's fee-based Web hosting services.

Although sign-ups have so far exceeded expectations, Yahoo has also run into clients that are unaware of and doubtful about the value of business blogging.

Unaware?  Doubtful?  Wow...sad, but true.  For the rest of the article, go here.

Comments

[Alex Grigg]

I don't think all businesses are necessarily wrong to pass on blogs. I use them on a daily basis and find them useful, but if I was going to buy some concrete would I check the manufacturer's blog first? I doubt it.

There are two things that I think are important for businesses considering blogs to think about (and these may apply to libraries too).

1. Are you going to make your blog public? If you allow anyone and everyone to comment on your blog then you need to be pretty sure that you're not just going to get negative comments, or at least that you're willing to deal with negative comments. Businesses that are marketing themselves may not be confident that they're going to hear good things and if they're not and they're unwilling to change then they are better off not opening themselves up to critique. Lots of negative posts are going to be unlikely to increase your customer base, although they will help you know where to make improvements.

2. Can you create an enjoyable voice for your institution? If you are going to simply list new products and alliances or the blog is an extra assignment for the corporate communications officer then you might want to think twice about blogging. Successful blogs are written by people who take an active interest in their chosen topic and present new and unique ideas about it. If your CEO or business founder is still excited about his/her business, then they're a great candidate to write the blog. If you are handing it off to a low level employee who doesn't hear the latest developments in your business and doesn't care about them, then you might as well just post the news on your webpage and forget the blog format.

Well, that's a longer post than I meant to make, but oh well.