Jeremy Wright's successful "antics" on Ebay, which resulted not only in his getting some great PR and a reasonably lucrative blogging job, but also the start of a new blogging consultancy, may become rightly regarded as a pioneer in helping to jumpstart a new industry, professional blogging.

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It looks as if Robert Scoble (along with Shel Israel) are challenging themselves to write a book on business blogs. Presumably, it will be entitled The Red Couch.

Of course, the de facto BEST BUSINESS BLOG BOOK OF ALL TIME is Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies being written by Susannah Gardner (she let's me call her Susie). I'm the technical editor for it so, heck yea, I'm prejudiced. By the way, it's available for pre-order right now on Amazon.com.

Radiant Marketing Group has become a sponsor of the upcoming Blog Business Summit in Seattle in January. I believe this will be a signal event for the furtherance of the cause of business blogging.

I need to make a blatant, yet thoroughly unabashed, request of you. Click the button above to go learn about the summit. That is a unique link for which I get credit. The more click-thrus on that link, the more exposure RMG gets at the summit. (Hey, I'm trying to build my business here, and need all the help I can get! :->) So, considering this is the holiday season, be charitable and help me out, ok? Thanks! 

Saw this in an article on EContentMag.com. . .

The wild and wooly blogosphere itself will not make money for many, including blog networks like Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc. Nevertheless, blogs are already proving to be powerful audience retention devices for known media brands. Some B2B sites report that up to 10% of daily traffic now goes to columnist blogs.

Blogging is less a business model than a thoroughly compelling communications model that keeps users coming back two and three times a day more effectively than standard content refreshes. Accept it and get sponsors for it.

"Thoroughly compelling communications model" is the phrase that jumped out and grabbed me. That pretty much sums it up. Blogging is not so much a business model, as it is as a tool for enhancing marketing communications. It's a traffic magnet that no small business should be without.

While I am coming more and more to the conclusion that, for the time being, RSS and email must be cohabitant marketing communications tools, there is still a debate brewing. Alex Barnett, Online Customer Experience Manager for Microsoft UK (how's that for a title!), discusses it in two posts: RSS Future - Distributed marketing and the solution to spam? and Email v RSS, let us move on. The later post contains a rather extensive listing of email and RSS positives and negatives.

For me, the debate was settled after having read an article by marketing executive Tom Barnes, CEO of MediaThink. In a first of two-part series entitled RSS: Marketing's Next Big Thing, Tom outlines advantages to both strategies and shows how they can work in simpatico. *The article is premium content, so I'm being careful not to raise the ire of Marketing Profs attorneys by giving away too much information. :-) But, you ought to become a subscriber to Marketing Profs anyway.*

Move over Andy, there is another definition of blogs that I like better than yours. (Just kidding, but it is a good one.) It comes from Halley Suitt, who authors the very popular Halley's Comment blog.

Her definition comes from a manifesto she wrote for ChangeThis.com called The Art of the Alpha Female Blogger. She calls blogs "love letters."

When you think about it, that's what they are, because love has to do with passion. And can you think of a more passionate group of people on the planet than bloggers? I don't think so.

Bloggers obsess over one topic and write about it with impunity. They attract a cadre of readers who share similar passions. It's addictive in its force and, when done well, is compelling, articulate and often cutting edge.

Face it, bloggers are hopeless romantics one and all. If that is indeed the case, I fit right in!  (Though I fancy myself as a "hopeful" romantic!)

Merriam-Webster says the #1 most searched word on its Web sites in 2004 was "blog." Who says blogging is not headed mainstream?

I've been promising you a review of some blogging related resources. Here's one from T. L. Pierce on the software application Blogjet.

T. L. also has begun a series called How to Blog 101, which is a basic primer on blogging. If you visit the site, you'll notice he has a lot of info on RSS as well. Good stuff!

Because I've heard mixed reviews about people trying to market their services on Ebay, the only reason this story interests me is that this particular service provider is a blogger.

Ensight.org blogger Jeremy Wright is offering his blog writing and consultancy services on Ebay and the bid, according to CBS MarketWatch's Frank Barnako, was up to $1500, with about a half-dozen bids.

Barnako does a great interview with him, well worth reading.

It seems to me his modus operandi here is to widen the doors for blogging just a bit...

I'd like to think I'm setting an example of what's possible for bloggers. Public relations was a nascent industry at one point; now it's a $4.7 billion industry. I'm not sure blogging will ever get that big, but it is certainly good for companies to be aware of the possibilities. As well as for bloggers to realize they're not "selling out" when they get paid to write.

This event is telling that blogs are still outside the mainstream in terms of use as business communications tools when an accomplished blogger like Jeremy has to go on Ebay in order to generate enough buzz to bring attention to the medium.

Jeremy is a business blogging evangelist par excellance, and it sounds like whatever he ends up making is less than he deserves.

I was contacted by Aboavista, a company based in Finland, about linking to a series of articles produced by their CEO Steve Jackson. (A good Finnish name, don't you think?)

The articles have to do with improving website conversion rates, which really is not key topic of this blog. But, because I'm a nice guy I decided to go with it.

Here's the first in a series of three. I'll post the other two in subsequent weeks. Oh, and they offer a free ebook entitled Learn Before You Spend. Feel free to download it.

If this is a topic of interest to you, let me refer to an excellent blog on the subject, Conversion Rater.