So much has changed about blogging since the first edition a couple of years ago and “social networking” has taken on amazing new dimensions. It has been a challenge to strike a balance between updating information and comments in the e-book, while not attempting to do a totally new book.

Doing a couple of detailed proof reads in the past 48 hours, what has actually struck me is that, although I say it myself, the basic approach and advice in the book are still quite relevant for the person I wrote for originally, the non-techie business owner or manager interested in blogging but not knowing where to start, what would be involved or what he or she would have to do.

There were a few instances of my being surprised at some opinions I held a couple of years ago and have now changed my viewpoint, for example on link exchanges and blogrolls. I was quite positive about both then, with some caveats, but now I am much more cautious and I believe there are better ways to achieve increased traffic and improved ranking.

Link to a page explaining why this e-book is the bees’ knees, the answer to a business owner’s prayer and the best thing since sliced bread, is here.

If you have come here for information about my 7 Step Business Blog manual, I apologise for any inconvenience. I expect to have things hunky-dory by the end of the weekend.

(Update Oct 11,2007: wishful thinking, that last para - now quite a few weeks later but things are moving. If you buy the book from the links here, I will send you a link to the completely revised, 2nd edition, due out in the next few days.)

When I launched this blog as a companion to my 7 Step Business Blog manual, I had the intention of keeping it current, adding resources and so on.

A lot has happened since then and a quick perusal will show that I have not been posting here very much or building the resources. So now I'm doing some re-considering: should I keep this blog going or pension it off?

After all, it's not as if I don't have enough outlets for my thoughts and opinions!

I'm blogging several times a week with the b5media network, on the subject of business blogging at the Business and Blogging site.

I'm also continuing with my Thinking Home Business site and have commitments - not kept up with lately as much as I would have wished - to post at Business Blog Consulting and Coachamatic.

And then there's my new Business Blogging Show - mainly podcasts.

But I'm looking at doing a new revision of the 7 Step Business Blog manual and even an audio version, as some have requested, so it's probably premature to close this blog off just now.

Last week, I set up my proper “Blog From The Beach” site and explained the basic concept in a post “A Blog of an Idea”:

I often think my ideal way to work would be (will be?) propped under
a bit of shade on the beach with a laptop and wireless connectivity,
blogging away.

The bigger picture is that blogging, like other “Web 2.0? tools,
helps small business owners and solopreneurs have more flexibility than
ever before in modes of operating and in lifestyle choices.

I have posted about this at Thinking Home Business:

It's being held at a surfing and tourist mecca, Byron Bay, which is not far from where I live, about a forty minute drive.

The last time I went to a business breakfast in Byron, I found the gathering were pretty switched on business people - friendly but not the laid back (or even blissed out) stereotype a lot of Australians have of the Byronites - not that you would blame them, living in a place of such natural beauty. But they were business people, there to learn and to do business.

So I know I will have to be on my toes, especially as I'm one of three. And as each of us speakers has only 30 minutes, I'm going to have to be very focused and will probably have to trim my usual Power Point presentation, so as to leave time for at least a couple of questions.

A lead article in the Business IT section of national daily The Australian this week by journalist Andrew Colley, Testing the Web 2.0 water, declares that, although there is an upsuge of interest in Web 2.0 tools among consumers and lobbyists, 'Australia's business community is struggling to find ways to reap value from Web 2.0'.

There are the obligatory quotes from research company experts, with a bit of a contest on whether the real buisness significance of Web 2.0 is in 'social computing' (thus Forrester Group's analyst Charlene Li) or whether it's 'really' about the technology creating a richer functionality in the browser (as per Gartner analyst Dion Wiggins).

Whether one or other of those views is more accurate in the great scheme of things, my interest is squarely on the social computing side of the discussion, or more specifically the 'business social', than the computing aspects.

A couple of weeks from now I'm speaking at a Blogs, Wikis & RSS conference in Sydney, on some of the obstacles businesses (and government) experience or perceive about using these collaborative tools. As companies have decided to pay for people to attend, that is an indication of interest.

On the local business front, I was pleased to be invited, as mentioned in a post here yesterday, to be one of the presenters at a breakfast seminar on business blogging. It will be held in the beautiful seaside town of Byron Bay, on September 27 - more details here when I have them.

Frank Arrigo wrote about business blogging in Australia the other day after taking a call from the Australian Financial Review - Another Press Interview on Corporate Blogging. The post is a good milestone and has attracted comments from two very well-informed guys, Mark Jones and Trevor Cook, including Trev's observation:
“I agree that blogging is gaining traction in corporate Australia, mostly at the 'I better find out what this is all about and stick my little toe in' stage”.

And for those wanting more reference points on blogging in Australia, see Frank Arrigo's own comments on the Web 2.0 article which triggered this post.

I'll discuss the government aspects in a separate post.

Tags: blogging, business blogging, The Australian, Web 2.0, Australia blogs, government

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So after a chat with our region's business advisory person who is organising the event, I jotted down some notes for her to include in the program.

It was interesting to try and condense the business case for blogging into one page - and to include an explanation of what blogging is, briefly but sufficiently to encourage local small business owners (we don't really have big businesses in these parts) to come along to breakfast. Loading it up with stuff about RSS and other aspects of blogging did not seem a good idea.

Anyway, here's my go at it and I welcome suggestions to improve it.

The Business Case for Blogging

A ‘blog’ or ‘weblog’ is a website which has some extra tools that make it possible for even the most non-technical person to update online content regularly, add pictures and even sound to text content and generally interact more effectively with customers and prospective customers. Blogs are very low cost in dollar terms (try between $0 and $20 a month) and can be integrated with a traditional website or set up separately. Internationally, blogs are used by Fortune 500 multinationals and solobusinesses in a new approach to marketing and customer relations.

Technorati – - which tracks the number of blogs, reported August 2006 that it is now tracking 50 million blogs: the number continues to double every 6 months, with 175,000 new blogs being created every day.

A few examples of businesses large and small, using blogs:

• CEO and President of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz - Jonathan's Blog
• CEO of motorbike company Ducati, Federico Minoi, connects directly with his customers and invites their feedback without intermediaries or spin doctors on the Desmoblog
• Savile Row bespoke tailor Thomas Mahon has created international business through his chatty, friendly English Cut blog
• Signs Never Sleep, weblog of the Lincoln Sign Company in the town of Lincoln (pop. 1,271), has promoted the company internationally and brought a measurable 10% increase in sales in 2005 ($35,000 of total $350,000) - as quoted in Debbie Weil's The Corporate Blogging Book.

The rest of the page was filled up with some Australia-focused information on blogging - subject of another post in the next day or so.

Tags: blogging, Technorati, business blogging, business case, small business

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By way of background, some blogging enthusiasts, including yours truly, are wont to reassure wouldbe bloggers, concerned about what they might need to know or do to blog, that it is really quite easy to write and upload a blog post. From one of my colleagues - Andy Wibbels? - I picked up and have re-used the phrase, “If you can write and send an email you can post to a blog”.

True as far as it goes, but in less boosterish moments I have to admit that there are pitfalls. Not the least of which is that if you compose your post online, as I regularly do with BlogHarbor and also with WordPress, you risk losing your work if you have some mishap, such as downtime on your Internet connection or a scheduled maintenance period you had forgotten about until too late.

Or if you forget the warning in BlogHabor (Blogware platform) when you have previewed your work, to use the Edit button not the Back button on your browser, and you haven’t first saved your work, you can lose the lot. That happened to me yesterday. Half an hour’s work, and perhaps a bright idea or two, needlessly lost. Not the first time, either.

A few good reasons to have another look at offline editors.

There are a few more reasons. One is that I want to be able to post some items to more than one of my blogs at a time and would value a shortcut to that, which Qumana and other tools provide.

I’m also wanting to find a way to help people I’m coaching be able to focus more on their content development than on the machinery of posting.

There is also the advantage with one of these tools that you can save a copy of your post on your own computer, rather than just relying on exporting your posts some time from a blog hosting service, if you are using a service such as BlogHarbor or Tags: , for instance.

And on a personal/professional note, as Tris Hussey is one of the principals of Qumana is a valued colleague who has been very supportive of my endeavours, I’ve been feeling a bit guilty that I haven’t given Qumana a fair trial. I had tried Qumana in an early version - QumanaLE 1.0 - but while I could see some benefits I had a few problems, especially with using keywords and allocating categories.

Before that I had tried Blogjet. And while looking back I see that I was feeling quite positive about it at the time, I did not continue - from recollection because, as with that early version of Qumana, I did not find posting to the site a totally seamless operation. That’s quite a while ago, early last year in fact, so I would not be surprised if Blogjet is now a more robust tool.

Anyway, just now I’ve downloaded the offline blog editing tool Qumana, now at version 3.0.0_b4 and am composing this post using the very neatly laid out editing screen as below.

I should probably mention that there is no automatic save (that I can notice), so especially with a long post it is still a smart move to save as you go, rather than waiting till the whole post is finished. In Qumana there is a clearly displayed button to do that.

Tags: blogging, Qumana, editing, BlogHarbor

I undertook to send him some examples of real estate blogs. I had in mind such blogs as the Wenatchee Washington Real Estate Agent blog, which my colleague Dean Hua told me about.

Some others, in no particular order and with no comment on their 'quality':

growabrain: Real Estate Blog Archive -
includes Australia’s CEO Corner blog from realestate.com.au

Real Estate Marketing Blog

Seattle’s Rain City Guide

The Real Estate Blog

Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

My finally getting around to send the links today to the real estate agent was prompted by my noticing that my coaching and blogging colleague Michele Corey has come up with a downloadable free guide for real estate agents who are contemplating having a blog. Michele’s 5 Reasons Your Real Estate Business Needs a Blog can be downloaded from her new site Wordstreamz Simple Real Estate Blog Solutions.

The report is written in a US context and the examples above are mostly from North America, so it would be interesting to know whether there are many successful real estate blogs in other parts of the world. As noted above, in Australia there is the CEO Corner blog of the online advertising service realestate.com.au but I wonder are there any actual real estate agents out there who are using blogs and if so what success are they having, or not?

And what about Europe, or Asia, etc?