In my excitement at being shortlisted for the Netvisionary awards and in coming quite high in Justin’s Technorati-ranked Top 100 Irish blogs, I missed something fundamental – the fact that I am doing well is a very poor reflection on the state of business blogging in Ireland.
What do I mean? Well, one of the things I do on a daily basis is consult to companies on Social Media (blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc.) and their potential as tools for collaboration and communication. Yet, looking through Justin’s ranked list of Irish blogs the first business blog* I spotted was Ice Cream Ireland in 56th place! That’s an indictment of my work and an indicator of the lack of business blogs in Ireland.
We ran a very successful five week Business Blog Training course in it@cork in September and October. We are considering running another because there is a demand and the feedback for the last one was so good.
Hopefully efforts like this will mean that the Netvisionary Blogger category will have business blogs in the shortlist next year and not geeks like me!
*Business blog in the sense that the blog was set up to help promote a business (Murphy’s Ice Cream in this case).
I have just done the same analysis Tom and it is dismal. Mind you the blogging course I am starting tomorrow evening is hands on so we shall see if I can start to chip away at this from the Kilkenny end 🙂
Part of the challenge is definitely the lack of training – there are precious few people in this space and for many SME’s the local CEB (or IT Cork in your instance) are the first port of call for skill-set acquisition.
keith
Out of curiousity, did any of the people from the course actually go ahead and set up blogs, or make improvements to their existing blogs?
Best of luck with the training Keith – let us know how it goes.
dahamsta, tbh, I don’t have any definitive answer to that for you – good point though, we should do a follow-up.
Tom, you can add one more to the list. Can I ever so tentatively announce blog.loudervoice.com. Early days still but the frequency of posting should start increasing pretty heavily in the run up to christmas.
I thought the blogging course was great – I don’t think I’ve had time to acknowledge the debt elsewhere in writing yet – thank you very much for your time and help(yes, dahamsta, Tom did inspire me to tinker with the blog from week to week). Tom, could you remind me again which setting I have to change to get into the top 100? I must have missed that bit.
Julian,
there’s two parts to your question –
1. First you have to get on Justin’s list of blogs – to that end I submitted your site uri to planet.journals.ie, you might also leave a comment on Justin’s post, to be sure!
2. You also need to increase your inward linkage. Your current Technorati ranking would put you at 121 on the list. We discussed strategies for increasing your inward linkage on the training course.
Feel free to come back to me here or by email if you have any questions.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the very prompt reply. I was only teasing… please don’t think I have anything but praise and gratitude for the concise and patient way you got so much directly useful information across in five sessions. When I saw the list, I subscribed to planetjournals straight away – thank you for doing the same, and of course the inward linkage is work in progress.
Julian – thanks for the kind words once more – the €50 is in the post 😉
I thought the comment was in jest but when I didn’t see the emoticon I thought I better play it straight, just in case!
Thanks for the mention! It is a shame there aren’t more business blogs all right. I’ve tried to enlist some that I think would be good candidates, but most of them are a bit overwhelmed by the time needed to blog. Most of us are keeping many balls up in the air. Still, I have found blogging helpful to the business and do suggest it…
Hi Tom,
I only noticed the top 100 blogs today. But as I hadn’t been registered with planet.journal I didn’t feature. Based on my Technorati rating I reckon I’d be 189th. I guess my area (fundraising and not-for-profits) is slightly more of a niche interest than ice cream!
I think there is still a problem with the vast majority of businesses in that they don’t see blogging as a worthwhile or even respectable pursuit. And then there’s a whole lot more people who think that a website need be nothing more than a glossy sales brochure online.
One of the things I run up against in my own attempts to evangelise blogging is the control issue – concern over what other people might comment on the blog. I think there’s a mindshift that still needs to take palce about the role of the web in an organisations communications mix.
Kieran – fair dues to you for keeping at it. It is great to hear that you find it useful, I imagine it has done a lot for your brand’s exposure (although, I had to do a bit of sleuthing to find the brand name!).
Damien – I think Kieran and yourself raise very valuable points about the perception of blogging in the business world.
1. Time involved – many people argue that the time commitment involved is too great. Jonathan Schwartz, the President and CEO of Sun Microsystems, blogs regularly. Sun Microsystems is a Fortune 500 company. If he can find time to blog, anyone can.
2. The control issue is easily debunked. If people are going to say negative things about you, where would you rather they said it, on their blog, or on yours? If it is on yours, they are far more likely to be polite and on your own blog, you get notified of the comment so you can respond far faster.
Mine came in at 51..small but “boutique” contribution…
Oops – sorry Anette, I missed that – d’oh!
It’s also a useful wakeup call that while blogging is more mainstream than 12 months back , it’s still not seen as a ‘must have’ for business people.
That will change, in the same way that business now cannot live without their email or website, despite neither existing (in a ‘mainstream’ sense) 10 years back.
Your blog and the content on this particular page was of great interest to me. Although I’m in the USA, my ancestors were not! Blogging and business quite logically go hand in hand and I can’t understand why any forward thinking businessman or woman isn’t availing themselves of this valuable tool. In my particular geographic area, dial-up internet access was the norm; no broadband carrier had seen fit to shepherd us into the techno-fold. Is lack of access a problem in Ireland? Or is it more a lack of comfort using the internet. There are so many sites available to assist a newbie in starting a blog that it’s quite baffling to me why every business has not crafted their own blog.
N.Kateus http://www.DigitalDad.net
Hi Tom,
Came across this post and thought I introduce my blog http://www.btbtraining.com/blog. I have only been blogging since Jan(08) so still learning as I go. Must say though, its bloody additive so far. As regards the state of business blogging in Ireland I know from first hand experience, it is something that more businesses are seriously considering but I think a fear of the unknown still exists.