A Blog (short for web log) provides commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news. A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or PR purposes are called corporate blogs. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents (also known as the blogosphere), such as blogdigger, Feedster, and Technorati. Technorati provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings.

Corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

Blogging among CEOs is becoming more popular, and more than 5% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally. Market research done in the first half of 2006 indicated that 34% of large companies had established weblogs. Another 35% planned to do so by the end of 2006, thus bringing the total to nearly 70%.

Some points:

McDonald’s LincolnFry – a fake blog was discovered, and it generated lots of negative word of mouth and little participation. As in all fields of information there will be the worthless with the good, but that does not detract for the enormous use Blogs can provide for us in sales careers.

American Express’ billboard – a fake Blog poster told readers to check out a great Amex billboard that was found to be an Ogilvy employee; this violation of trust resulted in massive negative word of mouth which spread around the world.

So what to do?

To keep from getting lost in the internet blogs and to narrow the field down as to what will help your sales, use the different blog search engines like you would use normal search engines: simply key in the term and you will get the result.

Another way to strain the needed information from the blog forest is to note all the reviews of blogs that appear in daily newspapers, magazines and the publications like: trade publications, industry news, and the business sections of websites and print media.

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