WEBCOM 2007: We were there!

We attended a number of extremely interesting conferences on the latest Web 2.0 trends, particularly one by Debbie Weil, the acknowledged "Corporate blogging" specialist. A few highlights from her presentation:

• The Gartner firm, which is renowned for its technological forecasts, predicts that the number of business blogs will explode in a year from now. One year in the US, does that make it two in Canada? In any case, it deserves close examination.
  
  
  
• What is the main deterrent to corporative blogging? Fear! Yes, fear of being criticized, fear of losing control. There are ways to overcome fear, however. See what Michel Leblanc, a prominent Québécois blogger, says about blog myths.
  
  
  
• The corporate blog is a great to generate market intelligence. It convinced Southwest Airlines to reverse a business decision, after it received an avalanche of comments. Dell used it to manage the exploding battery crisis.
  
  
  
• Blogs yield Return On Investment, even if it is not the hard, quantifiable type. What is the value of a "digital identity"? The simple fact that it helps boost your search engine page rank is already a benefit, and a livelier site, that more people visit, are other quantifiable aspects.
  
  
  
• The Chairman or CEO who wants to jump in and run a successful blog should follow a number of guidelines:
  
  
  • You have to put some passion into your blog and be authentic (that means someone else shouldn't write it for you).
    
    
  • Keep in mind the 4 Ps of corporate blogging according to famous blogger Steve Rubel: Passion, Purposeful, Present and Positional. 
    
    
  • Give yourself time to write your blog and think things over.
    
    
  • Be consistent with the corporate culture.
    
    

Outward bound links are crucial: "links are the currency of the blogosphere", as Debbie Weil puts it. You therefore have to speak about your blog, include comments in your blog about other blogs, and be active in the blogosphère, which doesn't happen overnight.