104785 Resource 102363 102466 102466 1129034054920 1132403344095 Controlled Don't expect a lot of traffic next to the city dump: What a corporate blog isn't

Huge upswing in blogging has created a lot of stink, how can your blog come out smelling like roses?

Couple of blurbs by our favorite morning coffee author, Matt Roush of the Great Lakes IT Report, <A href="mailto:mnroush@cbs.com">mnroush@cbs.com</A> 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 <A href="http://www.technorati.com/">http://www.technorati.com/</A> 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. 10 application/xml false collaboration content corporate blog corporate blogging Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 69.218.156.212 69.218.156.212 tfoydel false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102363 blog blogsite/SightLines/web