I hope this newsletter finds everyone embracing another holiday season. As this year comes to a close, we take a look at one of the most popular new communication tools of the new millennium. Blogging is not only changing the way people express themselves in their personal lives, but also serving as an important tool in the corporate world. Be sure to check out eRichards favorite Tim Sanders. Best wishes to you and yours for a healthy and peaceful season!

Best Regards,

Blogs (short for weblogs) are becoming the quickest, easiest, and most accessible way for people to share thoughts, opinions, and comments on virtually any topic from celebrity gossip to politics, from cooking recipes to personal life stories. A blog is a website where entries are made in a journal style and displayed in reverse chronological order. They are easy to set up, easy to maintain, and cheap to run. The leading blog search engine, Technorati, counts 27 million in the blog universe--triple what it was a year ago! Blogs dwarf the number of personal web pages. Corporate blogs are also becoming very popular. They are weblogs that are published and used by an organization to reach its organized goals. Check out our Extremely Agile blog!

There are two types of corporate blogs, the first of which are internal blogs. These serve as strong communication tools within or on behalf of a corporate community. Internal blogs, in many cases, are great alternatives to meetings, since people can comment on others’ posts or write new posts on their own time and from any location. Blogs are even being viewed as more practical than emails, since emails are commonly overlooked because people receive so many of them. In addition, blogs provide far better archiving than most peoples’ email accounts. Another positive aspect to internal blogs is that since they are open to the community, anyone can take part in the decision making process by adding comments— there’s no need to send invitations to post a comment on a blog. Internal blogs can unquestionably improve communications amongst employees in a corporate setting.

The second type of corporate blogging is external. Today, a huge part of corporate communications and public relations is network building. Blogs have proved important participatory communications tools in building complex and effective discussions between the corporation and clients, as well as between clients. As a result, blogs build links and connections between and among key audiences, thus helping corporations to persuade people to action, to leverage market conversations, and to improve the business overall. External blogs serve as effective public relations tools for many corporations.

Blogs are certainly gaining popularity. A market research (done by JupiterReseach) showed that 35% of large companies planned to institute corporate weblogs by the end of 2006. Combined with the existing deployed base of 34%, nearly 70% of all corporate website operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of this year. It doesn’t seem like this concept is going to die down anytime soon. Don't miss our Extremely Agile blog!