Ross Mayfield’s thoughts about wikis as well as links to other interesting posts on the same subject. Weblogs share a lot (most) of the advantages underlined in those articles.

Via Das E-Business Weblog, Suw Charman gives her classification of business blogs.

1. Marketing blogs - external, B2C blog, used to promote either the company or a product/service.
2. External blogs - used to communicate with the public, but not for sales purposes, for instance, in a consultation process.
3. Insider blogs - employee blogs, sanctioned but not controlled by the company they work for. (Sometimes disclaimed by the company they work for.)
4. Business blogs - blogs used within a company to share knowledge, build communities, disseminate news.
5. Content blogs - public-facing blogs reliant on content to bring in either subscription or, more likely, advertising revenue.

Via Business Opportunities Weblog, don’t miss this very interesting article on abc News: Blogging for dollars.

It is about passionate hobby bloggers who turned their activity into a real business. Some of them have turned into semi-celebrities, a sort of new brand of writers and entrepreneurs using cheap web spaces to forge their carrers. The article mentions the example of Marie Cox who was fired from one writing job to finally become a freelance writer. Then she was hired by Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton to write Wonkette. There is also the story of Rafat Ali, the 29-year-old author and publisher of the digital media blog PaidContent.org, who went from unemployed to self-employed through a weblog that started as a hobby.

In the US, the Democratic Party gave press credentials to more than 30 bloggers for the party’s convention in Boston this week, and Republicans have said they will do the same for their convention in August. Apparently, they are being heard. According to blogdex, a web site run by MIT’s media laboratory that tracks the fastest-spreading ideas in the blog universe, the site conventionbloggers.com is currently the most linked site on the web.

Some blogs have become start-up businesses devoid of traditional business plans or venture capital finances. Because of relatively low start-up and maintenance costs, bloggers have found they need not market a longer lasting light bulb or build a better mousetrap — they can simply sell themselves, and they can do it through their blogs.

With a devoted readership and continued cost-effectiveness, blogs are unlikely to fade away. More likely, as politicians and traditional media search for ways to reach an increasingly elusive public, blogging will be refined and become an even more accepted, mainstream way to gather and disseminate information.

JD enumerates 7 things RSS is good for as well as 5 reasons why companies should publish an RSS feed.

The new site of b-spirit.com (the one you see right now) is online. Its advantages are:

• it is no longer based on a weblog only but combines a weblog and static pages;
• navigation was made easier thanks to better defined sections and icons;
• the style sheet has been renewed completely;
• the texts have been corrected, e.g. the services and the FAQs;
• new sections are available, e.g. the best reasons for blog, examples of corporate blogs, quotations;
• new content will be easier to integrate.

In case you discover any bug, please let us know!

[Update 07/29/2004 00:12] If you follow up on the weblog of b-spirit.com, please use the following feeds in your aggregator.

• For the posts in english: http://b-spirit.com/blog/wp-rss2.php?cat=1.
• For the posts in french: http://b-spirit.com/blog/wp-rss2.php?cat=2.
• For the posts in english and in french: http://b-spirit.com/blog/wp-rss2.php.

CorporateBloggingBlog reports about a romanian corporate blog: eLearning - Timsoft @ WeBlog.ro. It shares information and experiences with those interested in eLearning in Romania, and provides news related to the company projects and activities.

Via The Blog Herald, Reuters UK have launched 23 new RSS feeds, joining the ever growing list of RSS feed suppliers, famed providers of media to the media. Caterina Rigoni, Marketing Manager Reuters Europe described the service in an e-mail to The Blog Herald as such:

“What you get from Reuters is the un-edited, non sanitised, raw footage experience -this is all about getting your news at the source, before anyone’s had the time to give it their spin.”

A Conversation with Dan Gillmor, about the important changes in PR and a good article, tomorrow’s PR today, giving good advice on how to get better results in PR.

Another very good post from Global PR Blog Week 1.0 about how to launch a corporate blog for a professional services organisation.

Corporate blogs can help any company to improve different aspects of its communications, not just in brand building. Before starting a blog, the areas of communication needing improvement in the organisation should be identified.

External communication:

• Brand awareness / Brand positioning
• Business development
• Issues management / lobbying
• Crisis communication
• Media relations
• Recruitment marketing
• Customer support
• Reseller/dealer support
• Community relations

Internal communication:

• Knowledge management
• Sales support
• Project communication

Microsoft publishes an interview of one of their most popular blogging employees, Robert Scoble: The Four-Letter Word That Can Get People Excited About Your Products. It’s all about corporate blogging.

“What’s really going on is a shift in how people relate to corporate communications. Twenty years ago, the only way you could get product information was from the PR departments. Even articles in newspapers were based on press releases. Today people are getting their information from individuals within the companies. People don’t trust companies, even companies they like. I mean, who would you rather get product information from, an individual from within the company, an engineer perhaps, or the company’s PR department? Ernst and Young has done a study that showed that 70 percent of car sales are generated by word of mouth. Blogs bring the power of word of mouth to the Web.”

Blog Business World explains how today’s individual bloggers may become tomorrow’s well paid professional bloggers.

On Global PR Blog Week 1.0, very good introduction to corporate blogging by B.L. Ochma: What Could Your Company Do With A Blog?.

“While many businesses are still getting used to the idea of having any kind of Web presence, forward-thinking companies are looking to blogs as simple, self-sustaining Websites and Intranets. If you’re not thinking about how to use blogs in your business, you’re missing a big opportunity.”

The latest creation of b-spirit.com is online. It is Mes RétrospectYves, the galery of a swiss artist showing his paintings in a weblog (in french). Essential for those who like painting and art.

Blog a bit so as to claim a blog space, and then see the impact of blogging to make the decision that would work in the context of your own organization. This is the advice of CorporateBlogging.Info for businesses who are still stuck on the question of whether to blog or not.

Steve Rubel reports: advertisers, publishers and software makers are now mining blogs for their commercial potential. The blog drumbeat is getting louder everyday. We are passed the tipping point.