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Thursday, January 10, 2008

“Does My Business Need a Blog?” Notes from a presentation for the Center for Business

These links and notes for the attendees at the Johnson County Community College Center for Business Lunch and Learn presentation on Wednesday, January 9, 2008, provide background and resources for the topics touched on during the presentation. 

The presentation for the Lunch and Learn at Johnson County Community College Center for Business revolved around the question of whether a business needs a blog. If we consider that a blog is simply one more method of connecting to our audience, customers, or colleagues. We considered five topics: We defined the term blog; we examined some examples of business blogs; we looked at methods to create them; we discussed best practices for putting material online; and I pointed out resources for further study. This post provides pointers to the sites examined, best practices, and other documentation as you consider building a blog for yourself, your business, or your community.

Who’s blogging in the business world?
SocialText provides the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki.
Bob Lutz’s Fastlane blog at GM
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog as CEO of Sun Microsystems, has a long-running blog.

How to find bloggers and what they’re talking about
Blog search at Technorati
Trend tracking at Blogpulse

Blogging tools
Fast, simple, easy blog creation at
Blogger
Fast, easy, more customization using WordPress
TypePad and Movable Type from sixapart
Expression Engine from Ellis Labs

Best practices and guidelines:
IBM
Sun Microsystems best practices