In the past few years the concept of “speed dating” has taken off. The idea is that a dozen women are assembled in a hotel room, each sitting at a separate table. Several dozen men are then paraded in front of these women. Each man gets three minutes with each

Yesterday say the Blogging 4 Business conference in London where Microsoft executive, Darren Strange, revealed some shocking news about the company. He announced that Microsoft has no policy on blogging for its staff. People who work for Microsoft are allowed to blog away happily. This is stunning news, considering several

As you’ll know I haven’t written anything here for the past four days. A combination of lots of work, a computer network breakdown and a busy social life all conspired against me. And it’s shown – my rankings as revealed by Alexa have dropped. Every time I stop blogging, my

Yesterday, a relative “novice” to the Internet saw me at a conference and grabbed me. “I must tell you something exciting about blogging,” he said. At one of the breaks, he came up to me full of smiles and said, “you’re right about blogging, it does make money”. Here’s his

Yesterday I was presenting at the National Meeting of the Professional Speakers Association and noticed that several members of the audience were taking notes. All very well, you might think. But in American meetings I’ve been to, several people would have been making their notes public – they would have

It’s fairly obvious to most people I meet that blogging has real benefits in terms of establishing and enhancing reputation. In other words, it’s a great public relations tool. If you agree, you’re not alone. The PR industry itself reckons that blogs are a highly effective tool for business to

According to this month’s Entrepreneur magazine, consumers are 50% more likely to be influenced by blogs and emails than by radio or TV advertising. So don’t let anyone tell you that blogging or email marketing have had their day. And if you’re in the TV advertising business – or if

A new survey released by Accenture today shows that the availability of information within a business is seriously hampering productivity. Indeed, it seems that six out of every ten managers are unable to find the information they really need. And most managers waste around two hours a day trying to

Just came across a blog entitled “5 prerequisites for blogging success“. It contains solid, useful advice to help anyone who wants to use blogs in their business. One point it makes is the need to put in time and commitment to making your blog a success. You need to see

This morning I’ve already received a press release and several links to news stories based on it, all telling me that blogging is “set to peak” next year. According to Gartner, the IT consultancy organisation, blogging and user generated content will hit its peak in 2007. Even the BBC has

Yesterday I met a successful businessman who runs his own company and who has been “thinking about writing a blog for over a year now” – his exact words. Last week I met a woman whose web site has been in the “planning stage” for nearly 18 months and by

Having a single blog is not enough, particularly for those running a business online. Here’s why. The vast majority of blogs get very little traffic; only a handful of people read a typical blog. Indeed, one study suggests that 40% of all blogs receive less than 10 readers per week.

Reuters, the world’s leading financial information and news organisation, has just invested $7m in blogging. They have announced that they are to use the services of Pluck, providing the outputs of blogs as part of their news service. The fact that such a respected news information organisation like Reuters is

In the past few days I’ve been reading about the increased use of bans on blogging. One company held a meeting where it banned anyone from blogging. The company, Nielsen, is a well known and respected media business, so why did they ban bloggers from their meeting? They claim it’s

We’ve all heard that blogging is good for business. Indeed, in this blog I’ve even said you must blog to stay in business. But what’s your return on investment for blogging? An attempt to work this out is being made at Forrester Research, however let’s consider what you are doing