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Couple of blurbs by our favorite morning coffee author, Matt Roush of the
Great Lakes IT Report, mnroush@cbs.com for
subscription, brought up the subject of blogging. Technorati's founder
Dave Sifry sees no letup in the popularity of this new medium, including
corporate blogging, but on the other hand there is so much blogging now that
it's difficult to find good content.
In fact, in another post in his morning newsletter Roush cites a study done
by AskJeeves about blogging that states there are very few blogs that are
important, based on the number of links to a blog by other blogs. The article
states that there are about 36,000 sites that are referenced by 20 or more other
sites. (I think that's pretty good.)
How can your blog stand out? Actually don't let the numbers fool you. There
are literally millions of blogs that are pure garbage. They appear to be the
result of some clever programming - content is built by machine - rather than
clever thought. We have seen this all before. Every time the
Internet takes a new turn there are always a group of folks who try to game the
system and there are plenty of blogs that are nothing more than this. For a good
example visit technorati at http://www.technorati.com/ and search on
CRM. Just take a look at 4 or 5 different sites and you'll see the garbage very
quickly.
The solution to this problem is twofold. First of all, we need better
bloggers out here. People who have something important to say and who have the
tools, intellectual and technological, to get it said effectively.
Create good content with a view toward collaboration, with customers,
other employees, interested observers, etc.. Blogging is a unique forum
because you can both reach out to your market and sharpen your message
simultaneously. Interactive media, absolutely.
Second, there needs to be better search engines for blogs. Recall that when
websites started to proliferate there was an immediate rush to game the search
engines by toying around in the background of the site - white on white type,
for example. We all had the experience back in 97, 98 where you would type in a
search term like "corporate news" + ibm and after a few click all you could find
was advertisements for vacations and worse.
Google fights the good fight for us all as they keep altering their
algorithms to reduce the nonsense and bring back useful search results.
Eventually this will happen in the blogosphere also. In the meantime, create
good content. It may take a while but the world will notice you. | 
