Noted freelance copywriter and author of more than 50 books, Robert Bly, is no friend of business blogs. Don't get me wrong, his arguments are well-founded and reasonable. I have an immense amount of admiration and respect for Bob and his opinions. (It didn't hurt that he called me a "blogging authority" either!) However, I think that in this case, his is a rush to judgment.

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Rich Ord has become my new best friend. No, we don't know one another, but he is a friend of business blogs. And any friend of blogs is a friend of mine!

In yesterday's post I ranted a bit about Robert Bly's objections to business blogs. Today, I want to simply share some insightful opinions from Rich regarding the future of business blogs. In an article entitled Blogs: Influencers First, Businesses Next, he makes several noteworthy statements...

• The real power is in the Borg-like ability of hundreds of thousands of blogs to collectively think (assimilate) and spread information. Listen up old media … Resistance is futile!



• Business blogs designed for marketing and public relations will eventually have a similar significant impact (as political and news blogs). Business people already use the Internet as their main source for political news. It seems sensible that blogs will transition to become their primary filter for professional news as well.



• Over the next few years, targeted blogs delivering coveted niche audiences of decision makers will thrive financially. Advertisers will pay a premium to connect with these hard to reach individuals. These niche blogs will evolve to become sucessful independent businesses as they reach traffic levels that interest corporate marketers and ad agencies.

Business blogs have already become vital sources for hard-to-find information. Face it, blogging is here to stay!

WOMA = Word Of Mouth Advertising

The old has become new again. Everyone has always known that word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising. It costs nothing. It's honest, real, authentic, genuine. Successful businesses have been built on it. Others killed by it.

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I have an announcement to make. You may or may not have known that Radiant Marketing Group was not my full-time endeavor, at least in terms of it being my "day job." Well, as of today it is, and I couldn't be happier. I've been wanting to make this move for months.

I have a good friend, Michael Katz, who told me recently, "Leap and the net will appear." For weeks it has been appearing, with doors opening for opportunities I could not begin to imagine. However, due to my work schedule, I had little time to take advantage of any of them. Now that time is afforded me, and I intend to make the most of it!

So, any of you entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers, or bootstrappers that may have some sagely advice, please feel free to share it. One thing I have learned is that there is safety in a multitude of counsel.

My favorite RSS reader (and more), Pluck, is rolling out a new brandable OEM version. What does that mean for your business? Namely that if you serve RSS feeds, you can provide your readers with a branded version of Pluck that contains your feeds as well as relevant feeds from other sites.

Here's a heads-up I got from Jay Velanju at Pluck...

OEM was always in the plan. Personally I think OEMing is going to be key to our success. We had to wait on two things though:

1. We needed to be feature rich so people would be interested in OEM deals. We're finally there from a feature point of view.



2. We needed to get a few people (like you) who were interested to help guide us forward from a market point of view.

So listening to you helped us decide what to include for OEM deals...

The non-profit for which I work had contacted Pluck some months ago about doing something like this. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, the new OEM version will be available soon after the first of the year.

I know this blog is gaining in popularity. No, not because I have a growing readership, although I'm extremely pleased with the number of regular readers. Not because I get loads of relevant comments and trackbacks, though I get my fair share, to be sure. I know my blog is growing in popularity because I'm getting more and more comment spam!

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Spoof emails - also known as phishing - present yet another problem related to email marketing. These hoax e-mails appear to be from a well-known company but can put you at risk.

They can be difficult to spot and generally ask you to click a link back to a spoof web site and provide, update or confirm sensitive personal information. To bait you, they may allude to an urgent or threatening condition concerning your account. The spoof PayPal emails that many of us have received are a classic example.

This is yet another reason any company that uses email as a marketing tool ought to consider adding RSS feeds as a syndication medium. At least to this point, RSS can be trusted. End users only receive information from the sites to which they subscribe, and can easily unsubscribe at any time.

In this regard RSS not only means Really Simply Syndication, but Really Stop Spam as well!

I'm looking for a few good bloggers to submit reviews of the various RSS readers/aggregators, and/or the various blogging platforms. I can't pay you anything per se, but will credit you, link to your blog or website, and say some very nice things about you.

If you've already written something, please let me know. I'll link to it. I want to make this a regular feature and don't have time to do it myself at present. If you're interested, email me.

Just noticed this article by B. L. Ochman on why advertisers would do well to consider buying space on blogs. Keyphrase: Narrow niche.

Want to read what some Microsoft researchers have to say about email vs. blogs? Me neither, but in case you do, here's the thread.