Cobweb Blogs

We are all busy people, but I fear that that we shall be coining the phrase coblogs - or cob web logs - for some of my illustrious counterparts on the West Berkshire Business Club are being a tad wayward at updating their blogs!

They might gather cobwebs, but the Google spiders who hunt out juicy, active and busy busy busy blogs ignore cobwebs and certainly the blogs languishing behind them.

Someone (possibly Mark Twain, maybe Abraham Lincoln) said something along the lines: "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt" However, that just doesn't work on a blog. Barren blogs undermine the businesses they represent!

Business Week, no less, stuck the knife into such a wayward blog yesterday here. To give you there gruesome highlights they identify the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards 2006 blog Launched in September and with the winner being announced this week - it has nothing more than the initial blog entry. And this sponsored by Mercedes Benz Financial!

There is a lesson there for us all? How long before someone visits your blog and decided you are just not interested in their business?

Tell Me Why You Don't Like Mondays?

Mondays do get a bad press, and it not just Bob Geldof's pension boosting take on a high school shooting that inspired the song that makes it so. That anthem might reinforce the idea that Monday is grim. Back to the grindstone and all that...

However, it is not very often that you hear people who own their own businesses complain about the start of the working week. Quite possibly because it is just another 24 hours in their seven day working week! Joking aside, I suspect it all comes down to how invested you are. If you care about your business, or your job, Monday is just another opportunity.

I am not alone among the WBBC bloggers not to post over the weekend. Partly because a friend emailed me a link to a wry definition of 'blogger' on the Urban Dictionary website:

"Blogger is a term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives. Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity. Sometimes it takes as little as a referral on a more popular blogger's website to set the lesser blogger's ego into orbit."

Okay, so I don't think any of use are document everything, but am alone in getting a buzz when I discover a fresh comment? Anyway, obviously it was work that kept me from posting over the weekend and not any self conscious fears of meeting that definition!

Work beckons. More soon.

Another WBBC Blogger Joins the Fray!

Days later and the advice of Internet Psychologist Graham Jones is being heeded by those who heard him at the West Berkshire Business Club on Wednesday - and lo, another blog has been born!

Four Four Time is the company founded by Jill & Tony Spiers to launch their excellent timer application, and it is worth a moment of any busy person's time if they value that time. And Tony's Blog is from the same talented team, and the latest WBBC blog to emerge in cyberspace.

Tony is as talented a writer as he is a programmer and his sense of endearing fun is thankfully not lost in the translation from speech to blog (and nor is my appreciation for his kind words about me in that very first blog!).

So if you are visiting here, take the time to visit there and be sure to leave comments too!

Greeting Deadlines

Month end is an understandably frantic time for many; for me it coincides with the copy deadline for the November edition of the Newbury Business News, published by the Newbury Weekly News, one of Morgan PR's major clients.

It always respresents a challenge coaxing those who are being written about to meet this deadline, coming as it does almost two weeks ahead of the actual publication. I suspect some do not see the deadline as 'real' - but it absolutely is and has to be met lest there is a knock on to the production process that lead to final publication, this time on November 9th.

The publication is a balanced blend of paid for advertising features and genuine news articles. For those seeking to be published they need to consider what message they wish to convey and what they want to achieve.

The strongest route is, of course, news. Readers will consider news articles more objective than advertising - although the fact that most adverts are written in the same style helps mitigate this. If what you want to say or do has a strong news value then it stands a good chance of being published - providing you tell me or the paper! However there are no guarantees and of course, being news, if a stronger story comes along, your tale could be squeezed out. There is also the consideration that you have little control over how the story will appear, where it features within the publication and whether there is a photograph. It is a news story and the publication has editorial independence. This independence is why so many people value it!

This relative uncertainty is why many opt for the advertising features. Naturally you pay - it is advertising - but such a feature is normally written by a journalist - often me - and signed off by the client with all the associated certainty over what will be published.

Sometimes the choice between trying for a news story, either by calling me or the publication, or opting for an advertisement, is straight forward. Other times it can be a challenge to decide how to handle something. It is almost always going to be more cost effective to issue a press release than pay for an advert - but you come back to the dilemma of there being no guarantees!

I am posting a great deal for someone who began by pointing out how busy he was!

More later, and let me know what you think?

Ghost Writers Are the Norm

Or at least they can if you get found out! (And apologies to The Doors for a poor play on 'Rider on the Storm')

Karen from The Best of Newbury has posted a comment suggesting that I should write other WBBC members blogs for them, generously being impressed at my novice blogging efforts.

The truth is that I have ghost written entries for blogs in the past and much as I once sold websites before I had my own, I've written for blogs prior to the creation of this one. Contact me if you do need any help or advice and be assured of complete confidentiality. Nobody can prove ghosts exist and you shouldn't help them!

I suspect that it may be a skill that does come into greater demand if the predictions of Internet Psychologist Graham Jones come to fruition. I appreciate his praise most sincerely. So much so I have been to visit his blog and have posted a comment on his entry, which you can find here.

Whatever we do we should support the blogs from fellow members, so if you have yet to post a comment at Karen's blog do so! Likewise Ivan's blog deserves our attention.