Business Blogging Models
The New York Times has a story this morning about the Bloggercon session on blogging as a business.

It makes mention of MayItPleasetheCourt.net, a blog run by J. Craig Williams, a lawyer in Newport Beach, Calif., who writes about court cases in the news that touch on his specialty. He said the blog has been successful in luring clients to his business. Cases that range from $10,00 to $100,000 I think he said. This, I think, is a case where businesses who know nothing about blogs should pay attention. What his law blog is doing - I suspect - is showing a potential client exactly where he is coming from. You get a mix of his personality and his expertise before you even pick up the phone to talk to him. Possibly most importantly, he starts to develop trust. Brilliant.

Another case that comes to mind -- though not mentioned in the NYT story -- is the new Microsoft blog, Channel 9. On Saturday night a bunch of us were standing in a bar waiting for our tables at an Indian restaurant and I got to ask Jeff Sandquist about the new Microsoft blog. Microsoft employees get to write what they like about what's going on in the company, and anyone in the world can read it. Sandquist told a great story about why it's called Channel 9. He said that after a particularly harrowing airline landing in Texas, a friend told him the secret to feeling more relaxed on airplanes: Channel 9. That's the channel (on at least one airline, obviously) where you can plug in your headsets and hear all the chatter in the cockpit. So while the passengers might think the plane is about to crash, the pilots are calmly telling the control tower, "Yea, we've just got a little turbulence here." So the idea with Channel 9 is that the blog pulls back the curtain for the customers, giving them more information and making them feel more comfortable with the whole experience.

I think Channel 9 and May it Please the Court are two strong examples of how businesses will start using blogging successfully. And if you think about how much distrust is still in the air from the stench of Enron, Worldcom, Shell, the mutual fund industry scandal, the accounting industry scandals, etc. and so on, you figure people are hungry to find someone they can trust and blogs could go a long way to providing more transparency for honest businesses.
- posted by Amy @ 4/19/2004 08:18:00 AM