Scoop’s Views

Five years ago, even less in many cases, a lot of businesses didn’t have Web sites, let alone email, so customers could shoot off an email or check the site to see if the store carries a certain product.

Let’s move ahead to, oh, let’s say 2005, just to be random. Many local businesses, even in Podunk, Idaho, had some kind of an email address, even if it was something like BobsCarDetailing@FreeEmailAccountForMyLife.com. Sure, it wasn’t professional, and, by far, certainly not an email address that would instill confidence in most Web users. In many cases, though, Bob’s Car Detailing may have had a Web site in 2006, too, even if it was a one of the free Web site hosts, such a Geocities.

Stepping ahead just a little, to the start of 2007. It was shocking to be a watch an explosion happen in slow motion, and in a few instances, be behind a few of the shock waves that formed the massive explosion overall. The explosion was the advent of businesses, and, in many cases, corporations, including some of the largest and most visible corporations, letting down their guard, even if ever so slightly, so people could see a little bit of what goes on behind the curtain by launching blogs.

In most cases, the blogs were corporate blogs, while other businesses actually revamped product sites, taking them from stale, static HTML-based sites to sites that are alive with new content on a regular to semi-regular basic, but bantering is allowed. That bantering would be the posting of comments from the public. Those comments, depending on the site, bring questions, words of praise, criticism, and sometimes really off-the-wall comments.

Microsoft has lifted its big blue, M-emblazoned curtain in allowing many of its employees to blog. It’s amazing some of the blogs that can be found on the microsoft.com domain. Sure, there are the product blogs, such as the respective blogs of Chris Pratley and Own Braun. They both work for Microsoft. They both work on the OneNote development team, and they both blog about various things involving Microsoft OneNote, a great utility that works much like the old school three-ring loose-leaf binders, of sorts. Or, if you want to think a little differently, as a vertical filing cabinet. Or anything else you want to imagine OneNote being.

Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business by DL Byron, Steve Broback Read more about this title…

The one thing that I’ve mentioned in many posts is that I am currently working on re-vamping a site for a non-profit organization, moving it from a static, HTML-based site to a CMS-based site using WordPress. Part of that move was to allow interaction with visitors to the site, but that had been planned, and was in the process of being implemented at the time a few things happened to change our thinking. By that, I mean the catalyst behind the site’s backbone.

In planning that move, I did a lot of reading. I read about CMS platforms, I read about user interfaces, and I read about many other topics. One topic, though, that no one interested in Web-based interaction, service, and people, should overlook, though, is Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business, by DL Byron and Steve Broback.

From start-to-finish, even though it’s a fast read, it’s packed with ideas and tips all the way through. The authors start out slow, explaining the concept of blogging, then take it to the level for people serious about making money: business owners, executives, and marketing people working for big business.

In a word, if you’re serious about wanting to blog, but, more importantly, if you want to blog from a business perspective, get your hands on a copy of Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business today, so you can learn from Byron and Broback things that you should do — not that you have to do. More importantly, learn tips and tricks that others find — if they ever learn them! — without the trial-and-error process of building a large blog site from scratch.

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Technorati Tags: Publish, Prosper, Publish and Prosper, Blogging for Your Business, DL Byron, Steve Broback, microsoft.com, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office OneNote, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft OneNote 2007, blogging, businesses, corporations, email, Web sites, CMS, HTML, hiding behind the curtain

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