Personally, I love the letters page of any magazine. Especially after a big, controversial article or issue. The exception is the letters page after the SI swimsuit issue…are they recycling letters from the 50′s or are people still up in arms about women in bikini’s in their sports mag?
This morning over frozen waffles and a cup of coffee I opened BusinessWeek and read the letters column that contained responses from the article Blogs Will Change Your Business. Some of the responses had been posted to the BusinessWeek Blog early on, but others either came in by mail or email.
There were people on both sides of the argument, and many reasonably skeptical. Some excerpts and thoughts follow…
In the real world a few hundred–maybe a couple thousand at best–say something sufficiently interesting to draw a reasonable number of hits. As for the remaining 8,999,000, they are relegated to the blogtopia of taking in each other’s electronic laundry!
–Paul N. Wenger
West Hartford, Conn.
While it’s true that most business bloggers won’t get the type of traffic that BusinessWeek, Stonyfield Farms, or Microsoft might enjoy, I think that’s missing an important point. Many of us run small businesses, and don’t need the ear of the entire country. With the Web, and now with blogs, a company serving a niche audience can survive. The Internet loves specialists!
A company doesn’t necessarily need to reach everyone. By creating targeted posts of interest to their customers and prospects, a good blogger can grow his/her business without thousands of visitors a day.
BTW, if Paul N. Werger is out there, please contact me or leave a comment below. I’d love to know your thoughts on this.
To what problem is Weblogging the answer? No problem in reality, and every problem in the minds of its boosters. Haven’t we seen this trend before–in push media, home-page building sites, portals, and viral marketing?
–Nico Macdonald
London
I think the problem is connecting with customers, a problem almost every business suffers from. Although at first glance Nico’s list seems like a collection of over-hyped bombs, I’d argue that every item in that list survives today in another form (with perhaps push media being the exception. That was a problem of taking into consideration only what the company wanted and not what the customer was interested in.)
Home-page building sites may not have turned the Internet on its head, but they certainly survive and companies are making money off of them. And aren’t blogs just the newest version of home page building sites? TypePad and others are certainly making a business out of them.
Portals continue to survive today…aren’t Yahoo and MSN.com examples of thriving portals?
And since when isn’t viral marketing working? Perhaps Ms. Macdonald hasn’t been to Burger King’s subservient chicken Web site.
On a smaller scale, I’ve found viral marketing works wonders. Since I posted a free download of my business blog presentation my blog traffic has tripled. It’s too soon to tell, but if only a few people end up hiring flyte to consult with them on their business blog, or ask me to speak to their organization on blogs, it will be well worth it.
Blogs will survive, but they will morph into something different but similar. This will be the future of blogs: (spoiler alert!)
- Newsreaders will become integrated into browsers and operating systems to the degree email programs and Web browsers are today. They will become part of the fabric of our online experience, even if they become an invisible piece.
- Business blogs will become an integrated part of most Web sites, also becoming nearly invisible, but incredibly essential. Web sites without a blogging component will seem stale next to their competition.
(BTW, I’ll keep this post up forever so we can come back and laugh at how wrong I was.)
Again, if Nico is out there and finds this post, please contact me…I’d love to hear your thoughts.
In short, many small businesses and solopreneurs read BusinessWeek. Even if blogs aren’t the answer for the Fortune 500, they offer great opportunities to the rest of us.
Thoughts?
Rich Brooks
Predicting the Future
I agree with you whole hartedly.
Thoughtful comments, though I believe my letter in Business Week was misinterpreted. I am was not saying that Weblogging has not found, and will not find, problems to which it is the solution. Rather, I was noting that there has been a rush to present Weblogs as the solution to, well, almost anything.
Many uses will be found for Weblogging. All the technology models I mentioned have found uses, including push media, which became email and SMS, and is core to RSS newsreaders.
My other point was that we need to understand the characteristics of Weblogging/RSS/syndication if we want to identify the problems to which it is the solution. The boosters, ironically, rarely properly understand that which they boost.
Nico,
Thanks for your feedback! I'm glad you found the post.
I think we're in agreement here. As I've said over and over again in my own blog, blogging is just another communication tool. In and of itself, it's the solution to nothing. However, it can be a medium that delivers solutions to just about anything if the message is crafted effectively.