The short version of the assignment is this: create your own business-related blog (or bizblog). Like the other major assignments in this class, it is worth 250 points. These points are going to be based on a number of factors: a) quality of the blog; b) quantity of postings; c) a brief presentation to the class about your blog. More information and details can be found below.
I know that some of you already are familiar with blogs, and some of you aren't. So this first post should help us all begin from more or less the same starting point.
- What is a blog?
This is a blog, short for web-log. There are lots of blogs out there in cyber-space, on every conceivable topic. I'll give you some examples of different blogs below, but if you are looking for more on this topic, check out Wikipedia's entry on the topic here . On the extraordinary power of blogs to shake up the corporate world, see this article on Dan Rather's demise from a recent blogstorm. - Why are we doing a blog in a business communication class?
In my view, this could be one of the most exciting opportunities of your entire education at USC. You know how people always want to get in on the ground floor of a great business? We've all heard stories about secretaries at places like Microsoft or Disney Studios who became multi-millionaires because they got in on the ground floor of hugely successful companies. Well, this is your chance to get in on the ground floor of a form of business communication that can be a platform for your entire career; and to become an early expert on a form of communication that every business will be studying like mad over the next few years in order to use properly. I believe that blogs are winds of a gathering storm about to blow through the world of business, similar to the way that PC's transformed the business world in the 80's, and the Internet transformed it in the 90's.
Extravagant claims, you think? Maybe. But here's a few things to consider from the recent news...
From Sunday's Financial Times:
“It started with a simple gripe posted on a weblog the blogger was unhappy that his new cellphone did not work as advertised.
It wasn’t long before other angry bloggers chimed in with their own stories, flooding the “blogosphere” with a stream of complaints that culminated last month in a class action lawsuit against the second-largest wireless network operator in the US.
The lawsuit against Verizon Wireless and the way it came about highlights the challenges that weblogs, popularly known as blogs, pose to corporations.
Blogs are online journals people create to share their thoughts and opinions on any subject imaginable. Internet experts say some blogs are adept at synthesising public opinion and can be a powerful force companies ignore at their peril.
Tech-savvy people have for decades shared their views through obscure internet chatrooms and bulletin boards, but easy-to-use blogging software and powerful search engines are now creating vast and efficient “word of mouth networks” where tens of millions can compare information.
“If companies don’t understand that and don’t learn how to track what people are saying, they are going to be hit violently with PR problems that they don’t understand or know where they are coming from,” says Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee who writes a popular tech blog..."
Or consider this from yesterday's LA Times:
Ask Jeeves Inc. plans to announce today that it has acquired the maker of Bloglines, a Web service that lets users keep up with online diaries and news sites.The deal could help Oakland-based Ask Jeeves compete with larger Internet search companies — such as Google Inc., which owns Blogger, a service that hosts so-called weblogs.Bloglines was created by Trustic Inc., a start-up based in Redwood City, Calif., and has emerged as the most popular of the services known as RSS aggregators.More and more Web publishers, from bloggers to major news organizations, are distributing their online postings through a technology called Really Simple Syndication. Bloglines lets users subscribe to RSS feeds and display them on a single Web page so they can keep up with websites that interest them without having to check each site for updates."This is the next way you're going to see people searching for content and consuming content," said Gary Stein, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research. "It's exciting that one of the main search engines has made a move to bring this type of search into its fold."
It is clear that multi-national corporations are just now awakening to the power of blogs, and they are trying various ways to harness that power for their own uses. Just today, in fact, we see MSNBC.com trying to get into the act. But it is not just major media firms that are slowly seeing the power of blogs: even CEO's of major companies are launching their own blogs. For example, George Soros, international financier and multi-billionnaire; Jonathan Schwarz, President and CEO of Sun Microsystems; and Bob Lutz, the Vice Chairman of General Motors, just to name a few.
However, sometimes the major corporations make colossal blunders, such as this one by McDonalds, where they tried to start a fake blog, and got reamed for it in the blogosphere.
- But what about ordinary people like us?
This is the cool part, in my opinion. The real power of the blogs lay in ordinary people. I don't think the CEO blogs listed above are really very good or interesting, to tell the truth. I think that the most interesting ones are ones at much lower levels on the food chain, so to speak. Some of them are actually approved by management, and people can actually blog at work as part of their jobs. Microsoft did this as an experiment, as I understand; now they encourage it. One of their more well-known blogs is here--good for you to be familiar with if you're looking for a job. And on the better blogs, there are lots of good links--for example, on the MS blog just mentioned, there is a link to a Business World blog--which might give you lots of good leads for this assignment. But Google, despite hosting the blog service this blog is on, just fired someone for blogging at work! - Okay, how do I get started?
Before you do anything at all, I'd suggest that you simply browse a number of different blogs. I think that the most read, and probably the best, blogs are political, and you can learn a lot from them about how to go about making a good blog. See these very popular examples: Instapundit, Daily Kos, Powerline, and TKS.
- Okay, now what?
Start your own blog. You can use e-blogger; it is fast and easy; see the masthead on this blog to get started. You can use any blog creator you wish. But send me an e-mail with your blog address right away--no later than Friday.
- What's my ultimate goal?
At first, just experiment and read a lot of blogs; post whatever you want that you think is interesting.
Then, after you've begun to get a feel for blogging, begin to develop a theme to your work--it might be on the power of blogging in your field, or on doing international business. Anything that is business-related is fair game. It can be about advertising, PR, accounting; or about business ethics and scandals; about whatever you want.
Ultimately, you want to post regularly, and make good quality comments, on some topic related to business.
Eventually, you'll want to make a presentation to the rest of the class on your work--not in the least so that you will get more comments on your blogsite!
Enough for now; more details to come....
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