Blogging for Business

My top 5 points from the blogging chapter:

1. Blogging is both a way to speak your mind, and to learn.
2. Blogs are opinions, not necessarily facts.
3. Blogs can be used to learn about what is going on, and what is important, within an industry.
4. Blogging allows for two-way conversations which traditional media does not.
5. You can enhance your personal, or company, reputation by blogging.  But, you can also do the opposite!

What I find most important about this is point number 3 from above.  Having a background in market and competitive intelligence I am always interested in learning anything and everything that I can that will allow our company to develop a competitive advantage.  For me, being able to listen to, and potentially pro-actively participate in, conversations related to our industry by those involved in the industry could be invaluable.  If I, or my colleagues, can engage with people in the industry on more of a peer-to-peer basis as opposed to supplier-to-customer, or worse vendor-to-prospect, then I see that as being the best opportunity to really understand what the true issues in the industry are, and how the market views both my organization's, and the competitor's, abilities to address those issues.

Although I find this possibility about blogging most interesting, it does not currently have a strong relationship to my current industry.  After spending a good thirty minutes on Technorati I could not find a single blog, or blog post relating to any of our major industry terms or competitors.  However, when I spent some time searching Google Blogs I did manage to find strings related to some of our key words.  However, most things that I came across were competitor websites, not blogs.  There was little direct opportunity for blogging involvement.  So, from a market intelligence perspective, there is little to access.  But, on the positive, it does offer up a great opportunity for us to own the space and quickly set ourselves apart as a trend setting authority and knowledge leader in the industry, providing a chance for us to win followers and customers.  

However, on the negative, it also poses a challenge to me as I need to convince our management to get involved in blogging, not as a way to stay with the competition, but instead as a way to move ahead of the competition.  For a conservative company this will be a difficult sell!