Newsgroups and Blogs

Commercial posts to a newsgroup should be short and to the point. Use the subject line to clarify the topic of the post. This will allow other users of the newsgroup to determine if the post is of use to them. Phaedra Hise, author of Growing Your Business Online, recommends keeping language simple and without "sales" emphasis, such as "substantial business opportunity." As with most information online, recipients are not interested in wading through a lot of hyperbole to get to the facts. Hise also notes that it is important to be up front about being a company trying to sell a product, if that is your purpose, rather than posing as just another interested user. Her suggestion is to post a message asking if a specific commercial post would be acceptable to participants prior to posting the commercial article.

Using newsgroups can be a simple and rewarding method of finding out more about industry and competition. Used with sensitivity and purpose, they can also serve as an inexpensive path to marketing, sales, and business opportunities for a small business.

BLOGS

Another tool that may offer similar opportunities, again, if used with sensitivity and frankness, is the blog. The term blog is a truncated version of the earlier weblog. A blog is basically a journal that is published on the Web. The activity of updating a blog is called "blogging" and the person who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated frequently, if not daily, using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Another key component of blogs is that they link to other sites and blogs. In this way, bloggers communicate with one another, establish online communities, and comment on topics and subject in the news.

In 1999, the first blogs appeared, still called weblogs at the time. There were, in 1999, a few hundred such sites but software came out that same year which made it much easier to create a blog and the number of blogs began to grow rapidly. Although nobody knows for sure how many blogs exist, all estimates place the number in the millions as of early 2006, 27 million according to Forrester Research. The community of bloggers, the blogosphere, is large and growing. This has tempted businesses to try and take advantage of this new community to reach out through it to potential customers.

Although blogs by their very nature occupy a noncommercial Web space, many believe that businesses may be able to use blogs to establish a communications avenue with customers and reach those who influence opinion through popular blogs. So far, there are few business blogs but that is changing quickly.

Through a blog a business can disseminate information about its products and services, gather opinions from customers and try to mold brand awareness through interaction with popular (well read) blogs. But, as Ben King explains in an article on the subject published in The Financial Times, making a weblog or blog is not simply a matter of sticking the word blog at the top of a column of chatty copy on a normal business Web site. Blogs are more complicated vehicles. "For the better corporate bloggers, the key to success has been to adopt the same software tools as the consumers they are imitating'¦. Of course, these tools do not guarantee a successful blogging project. No one will read a blog that is not interesting, and no software yet devised can guarantee that. The rapid spontaneous back and forth discourse of the blogosphere is not an easy fit with the slow, cautious approach favored by most corporate marketing departments." King recommends that any company wishing to open a serious dialogue with bloggers be ready to study the blogosphere, to be as open and frank about their objectives as possible, and to use standard software packages to develop the blog site.

Blogging is still relatively young. Whether it develops as a useful new tool for business entities has yet to be determined. Blogging is, however, something that entrepreneurs should follow as an interesting online development and one that may become useful in a business's effort to reach out to its clients. And, many companies are profiting from the blogosphere already, by teaching other companies how to use blogs. Forrester Research, for example, offers a two-day seminar on the subject. They explain the need to learn about blogs this way: "As customers increasingly tune out traditional advertising and turn to new communication channels to fill the void, companies must learn how to join in the conversation. Moreover, besides connecting companies and their customers, blogs are also becoming an invaluable collaboration tool within companies to facilitate knowledge management and cross-functional communications." The blogosphere appears to be a trend worth watching.