blogging for business

Just back from an informative NewMediaBC session on Blogging with Darren Barefoot of Capulet and Roland Tanglao of Bryght. A couple of popular Vancouver Bloggers (tm), they did a "blogging 101 session" for the group, explained some fundamentals on how things like RSS work, and why blogging is good for companies to get into. A pretty well attended NewMediaBC session, the room seemed split amongst those that blogged, read RSS feeds daily, etc. and those that didn't.

From a corporate perspective, it's interesting to consider doing a good company blog -- a bit scary, wanting to demonstrate how clever you and your co-workers are, but not wanting to give the farm away or provide too much competitive intelligence. Perhaps a bit different for a product company that decides to take up corporate blogging versus a professional services firm, although maybe product types feel there's equal risk, given things like intellectual property, patents, a super competitive product market, etc.

I liked the slide on Microsoft's (Scoble's) rules of blogging "don't be stupid." More on that here.

Good session. A part 2 would be really good -- an advanced session on the use of blogging software as a stand-in for low budget mini-CMS projects or something like that. Perhaps a bit more nuts and bolts on using blogging tools, RSS, syndication, XML, etc. in clever ways.