Monday, January 31, 2005

Blog Business Summit Roundup

Having recently come back from the Blog Business Summit, we have put up a series of posts which may help your small business in terms of marketing, technology and blogging. If these subjects interest you, here are the posts:

Picking a Blogging Platform

Basecamp Defined

Creating Controversy

posted @ 9:44 AM

Picking a Blogging Platform

Molly Holzschlag and DL Byron gave a session yesterday on: Picking a Platform: Blogging Engines Compared. 

This is an important set of slides for small businesses to go through when thinking about getting into blogging.  This is a high-level presentation, but it does raise all the questions that you absolutely need to think about and address before you start. 

Molly also gave a presentation on how to build blog traffic.  It also raises the questions you need to raise once you have made the step of choosing the platform, how to get going.  The Blog Business Summit has archived all the presentations given (and links to people blogging about it).  There are more small business people here than large. 

So, keep in mind, small businesses can get their message above the noise by leverage technologies, like blogs, to communicate effectively with your customers.

posted @ 9:42 AM

Basecamp Defined

Here at the Blog Business Summit Basecamp gave a lunch-time seminar about their web-based project management tool.  I use Basecamp in two roles.  I run a Basecamp project for a small group of us working on a project and I'm a client/customer of a group that uses Basecamp.  Truly this is an easy to use, clean, and no nonsense tool that any one who can use a web-browser can use to manage projects, both internal and external.
 
The best thing--you can try a simple project for free.  Kick the tires.  Try the features.  All small businesses have at these two things in common: you're always working on something and you need to make the best use of their money.  Basecamp helps with both of these.  Here's a short post from another person who uses it Jennifer Rice of Brand Mantra:What's Your Brand Mantra?- Project management tool

posted @ 9:42 AM

Creating Controversy

Here's the idea.  Blog passionately.  Blog about what you're excited about.  And blog to stir up some controversy.  Not the kind of controversy that brings negative press, but something that gets people thinking.  Well that's what Kathy Sierra says.  Here are a couple good quotes from her:
 
"Creating passionate users is NOT about finding ways to make everyone like you. It's about finding ways to use your own passion to inspire passion in others, and anything with that much power is bound to piss off plenty of status-quo/who-moved-my-cheese people. Bring it on."
 
"Brains love play. Find a way to bring more play (or at least a sense of playfulness) into someone's life, and you might just end up with a fan."
Nobody attracted attention by playing it safe.  Marketing, especially for small businesses, is about risk.  You're taking a risk being a small business.  Take a risk in your blogging.  Maybe challenge the conventional wisdom in your industry.  You might find that you have allies.  You might find people link to you--and then visit your website to learn more about you--just because you're saying something interesting, challenging and thought provoking.
 
Go ahead, stir it up.  You never know what might rise to the top.
 

posted @ 9:40 AM