Blog Communities May Be Best Option for Small to Mid-Sized Companies
As I mentioned in a post on PowderandBulk.com, I was at the Powder Show exactly 10 years ago, introducing K-Tron International's first website (we now have about a dozen and the number keeps growing). Believe it or not, crowds gathered in our booth to see the Powder Show's first-ever demonstration of a website. I ran the demo from a CD because there was no broadband available then.
I'd say blogging for most businesses is at about the same point the World Wide Web was 10 years ago. It remains to be seen if business, especially small to mid-sized companies, will find the resources to enter the blogosphere to the extent they have embraced the web. I suspect that community sites like PowderandBulk.com, may become the preferred medium for most companies. Unlike the industrial “web malls” that had a brief but spectacular rise and fall, blogging communities will likely start slow and grow over time. They offer companies the opportunity to blog without the time and financial commitments, and legal risks, of hosting their own blogs. That may appeal to a broad range of companies.
Don Dunnington
IAOC President
Don,
It's amazing how few years ago it was that the Internet was new. In terms of significance, though, development of the web and e-mail are way more significant than blogging. Blogging and RSS are not the same thing. I think RSS has the potential to be as significant, almost, as e-mail or the web, but not blogging.
Blogging feels to me like the new media — the democratization of the media — a continuation of the desktop publishing revolution putting the tools of mass communication into the hands of the public. But there are some people who are born to blog (Matt Drudge, Seth Godin, Jim Romanesko, Cory Doctorow, B.L. Ochman, to name a few) and they will survive the blog shakeout and prosper. And there are a whole lot of people who will try keeping a blog and tire of it and tune into major portal blogs such as Huffington Post and IAOCblog.
I don't think blogging will be widely embraced by business — certainly not as widely as web sites or e-mail — but it will be embraced by the media.
STEVE O'KEEFE
Steve,
I think blogging could be big for certain types of businesses and business people. Certainly it should be a major tool for consultants who need to demonstrate their expertise and gain visibility. I think another category that could benefit is manufacturer's reps, if they can find the time. For many reps, their business depends on consultative selling, and that depends on having conversations with their prospects and customers. With voicemail, email Spam, smaller engineering staffs, etc., it's getting harder for reps to have those one-on-one conversations that make their business work. Blogging presents an interesting way for them to apply their conversation skills in a new medium. It could be an effective model for them.
Don
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