Weblogs Working as Business Drivers in Minnesota
The two major newspapers in the Twin Cities areas of Minnesota have discovered that businesses are using weblogs. The St. Paul Pioneer Press ran an article on Friday called "Blogging for Business" that says that area entrepreneurs and politicians are using weblog technology to keep adding new and interesting content to their web sites. The article talks about the weblog being run by Ray Cox of Northfield Construction Company where Cox says:
It is good that the general media is picking up on blogs.... I really like the easy format that I can {use to} "talk" to folks and get information and opinions out quickly.... {The} main reason I started using a blog was because it is easy to use and allows me to update information in a timely fashion. I find regular webpages that have outdated information very frustrating.
The Pioneer Press article goes on to quote Andrew Eklund, a web marketing consultant, as saying:
Most corporate Web sites are still annoyingly dull.... Essentially, most are outdated repositories of unkempt content (without a) compelling voice. A blog can help change that.
For some reason, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a remarkably similar article in their Sunday edition, quoting many of the same people. It's hard to fathom why they chose to do it. Whether they began working on their story and got scooped, or they felt that this was a particularly hot topic in the area is not clear.
The important aspect of using weblog technology on a corporate web site is that it increases the authenticity of the information. By attaching a name to each piece of information, potential customers see who works at the business, what they know, and the things that they think are important. You get even more bang-for-the-buck by writing in first person.
If blogging is done properly, the frequency of content updates is dramatically improved. The technology makes it easy to add things to the site, so why not update it on a daily or at least a semi-weekly basis? At CTDATA, we post things on our site almost every weekday. As a result, the site has a regular audience that communicates with our company and comments about what we post.
Whether you want to completely makeover your site using weblog technology or simply add a weblog to an existing site, CTDATA can help. Get in touch with us and we'll start making suggestions.