Blogcritics Author: Anita Campbell

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Podcast Review: MicroBusiness News Briefs

Anita Campbell — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:34:52 EST

This podcast review is about the podcast Microbusiness News Briefs by Dawn Rivers Baker of the Microbusiness Journal.The Microbusiness News Briefs podcast is the audio version of the newsletter produced by Dawn and it exists to further the interests of microenterprise owners, and to aid and encourage microenterprises at every stage of their evolutionWhile the current inventory of available podcasts is not that large it is made up for by the content packed into each show. Dawn is on top of all the issues that are pertinent to a microbusiness, particularly those that involve the government and politics. Her insight and knowledge regarding current issues and the latest (and I mean latest) knowledge of the state of actions around the issues is second to none that I have heard or read. Dawn provides the listener very little flash and sizzle in the audio but moves rapidly into the meat of her content, perspective and sometimes humorous observations.Pluses: I think the audio is very clean, the length of each show makes it easily digestible (10-20 minutes on average) and new shows are produced on a weekly basis. I particularly like that with each blog post describing the show she puts in four or five relevant links to sources of more information and help around the issues discussed in that show.Dawn also has a very pleasant voice for audio and her preparation and delivery is first class and obviously well practiced. In addition there is the opportunity to vote and rate her podcasts right on the podcast home page -- nice touch!Minuses: My only constructive advice is to make the podcast page a little more personal, a photo and easy access to a brief personal bio would help the listener feel greater proximity (a radio term for one to one communication) to Dawn as they listen to shows.I also could not find any way on the site to subscribe to a feed (using RSS) for the podcasts so I can get them automatically delivered to me when available.Overall I highly recommend that you add Microbusiness News Briefs to your must listen menu of podcasts.by Steve Rucinski

Anita Campbell is the Editor of the award-winning Small Business Trends (www.smallbiztrends.com) website and host of her own talk radio program, Small Business Trends Radio, on the WSRadio.com Internet network.

The 7 Irrefutable Rules of Small Business Growth

Anita Campbell — Sun, 8 May 2005 20:28:31 EDT

Steven Little's book, "The 7 Irrefutable Rules of Small Business Growth," should be on the reading list of all small business owners and anyone who follows the small business market. I loved this book! The reason I loved it? The book elevates the outlook of the small business owner. It is really a strategy book for small business owners. The author urges small business owners to step back and look at the big picture if they want to grow. His premise is that opportunities and answers are not just within a company, but externally also. Or as a mentor of mine used to counsel, "don't focus inside the four walls of the business, look outside." This is an easy-to-read book. The cover features a testimonial that says of the author, "Steve is a true story-teller." If you are like me, you probably take book testimonials with a grain of salt. But this one gives an accurate picture of what to expect. Steven Little is indeed a story-teller and he keeps it interesting with real-life examples. One such example in the book involves the tale of two rope making businesses. One focused on growing a plant -- henequen -- and making natural-fiber rope from it. The other defined its business more broadly, as providing ropes of any materials for the shipping industry. The business that focused narrowly on henequen saw demand for natural-fiber rope decline dramatically, and is now at a mere fraction of its one-time peak. The business that saw itself in the context of a world that was changing with new technologies, and focused on meeting its customers' needs, changed with the times and now manufactures rope made of synthetic materials. It is thriving. It's this kind of example that drives home the author's points and keeps you turning the pages.The most unique part of the book is the chapter on seeing the future more clearly. In fact, it's Rule #7 of the book's irrefutable rules. The author talks about the need to listen to "weak signals" around you of what is happening: new ideas, new styles, new products. He even suggests that every business owner needs to read 50 magazines a month (or web sites, newspapers, research reports, or other sources of information). Although he doesn't use the word, in essence, he says that every business owner needs to be a trendspotter. Why? So that they can forecast their companies' next moves. This passage from the book explains it best:"Most successful, growth-oriented entrepreneurs I know are voracious gatherers of information. By combining their own internal trend data, their external scanning efforts, and understanding of potentially disruptive weak signals, they are prepared to take their forecasting to the next level."This companion guest column written by Steven Little and available on the Internet, describes more about Rule #7 in the book: Using "Weak Signals" To Identify Opportunities. Bottom line: Read this book. You will get good value from it. If you are into mixing business and pleasure, it's even engaging enough for summer reading on the beach.* * * * *This review was adapted from a review that first appeared on the author's weblog, Small Business Trends, along with a companion guest column by Steven Little.

Review: Online Marketing Blog

Anita Campbell — Wed, 2 Mar 2005 09:21:40 EST

Editor's note: Over at Small Business Trends we do a weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This is the fifty-fourth in that series. This week's Review is about the Online Marketing blog. It's the brainchild of Lee Odden, the founder of TopRank, a search engine optimization firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.Lee is part of that growing number of professionals who use blogging as a kind of enforced discipline to stay up to date on their areas of expertise. Blogging requires them to efficiently gather news and information. The act of digesting the information and communicating it in a blog makes these professionals even more knowledgeable. Blogs are great knowledge management tools.At the same time, Lee is providing a valuable service for clients and the public. Blogging also gives him a chance to practice what he preaches, i.e., blog optimization and promotion.If you are writing a business blog, you are going to want to attract readers. After all, you don't want your hard work to go unnoticed, right?I've learned quite a bit from reading this blog. You can too. One of the things I like best about the Online Marketing blog is its niche focus. Lee adheres closely to the topic of search engine optimization, along with hard-to-find information about online marketing. That's what makes it so valuable. For instance, Lee has an an excellent blogroll of search marketing blogs. I've noted before in these Reviews that compiling a niche-focus, single topic blogroll can be a source of competitive differentiation for a blog. People will bookmark the blog simply because of the great blogroll.Even better, you'll find very specific posts with step-by-step instructions. Take, for instance, this post about RSS Marketing. It has enough detail to be truly useful. And it is about a subject that only the most knowledgeable insiders are aware of today. But I predict that leveraging RSS for promotion and marketing will become red hot later in 2005 and 2006. Blog posts such as this are one of the factors that set the Online Marketing blog apart.I recommend spending 15 minutes studying the way this blog is set up and organized. Look at the header, the footer and everything in between. You'll come away with at least a few tips on blog optimization. Now, it's time for a few lessons directly from Lee, the expert. Lee says there are three components to a well read blog: content, frequency and distribution. "Content should be flavorful and to the point. Post often. When I started posting several times per day, our traffic increased significantly. When I invited another person to post, it helped even more. What's great about blog marketing is that you can promote your blog as a web site to traditional search engines and directories as well as to blog/RSS search engines and directories. Using Technorati tags and maintaining bookmarks through del.icio.us and furl.net is having a modest impact on quantity of traffic but it has brought very high quality traffic. Make meaningful, helpful posts on other blogs in your category. It's the best way to get links and create new connections. Use keywords in your post titles, archive URLs and text links to posts."Sounds like great advice. The Power: The Power of the Online Marketing blog is in its specific, hard-to-find information on the topic of search optimization and online marketing, especially blog optimization and RSS marketing. Come on over to Small Business Trends to read the other 53 PowerBlog Reviews

Review of "Starting Something"

Anita Campbell — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 18:49:10 EST

Today I hosted the 7th Business Blog Book Tour at my main blog, Small Business Trends. The subject of the tour was author and entrepreneur Wayne McVicker.Wayne is a very likeable and genuine person. Wayne spoke from the heart about his book "Starting Something." "Starting Something" is a fascinating book that reads more like a novel than a business book. The story is about how Wayne and a partner started the company Neoforma, which went public in the midst of the Dot Com era. Wayne starts the book with the lines: "I made a few hundred million... I lost a few hundred million." Those lines are icons of an era. In 12 words they conjure up heady images of technology entrepreneurs turned Dot Com millionaires overnight when their companies went public. And sometimes the millions disappeared just as fast as they came.The book is set up in an intriguing way. It has many short chapters, each of which is a vignette. You can read a chapter here and there, set it down, and come back later. Bite-sized lessons about business evolve out of the chapters. Wayne was nice enough to spend some time with us on the phone, an interview which Steve "Professor Podcast" Rucinski and I recorded. Go here to listen to the recording of Wayne McVicker reviewing his own book. You can listen online via Windows Media player, or download it as a podcast to your iPod. It's about 30 minutes long. I also recommend you buy the book and read it. Especially if you are an entrepreneur driven by your dreams of starting something and growing it. It will give you hope and some inside pointers.And as an added treat, Wayne has written up the backstory about self-publishing his book (although the hardback book is so beautifully done you'd swear a major publishing house printed it). If you have ever considered self-publishing a book, you'll find the backstory exceptionally useful. Wayne has lots of wisdom to share. And the article got some interesting discussion going. The above is adapted from a post that first appeared on the author's weblog, entitled "Starting Something" by Wayne McVicker.

PowerBlog Review of Fifteen Degrees North

Anita Campbell — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 16:53:08 EST

Editor's note: Over at Small Business Trends, we do a regular weekly series of reviews of business weblogs. This is the fifty-second in that series, called PowerBlog Reviews. The Fifteen Degrees North blog is associated with Fifteen Degrees-North, "Internet Marketing and Web Design Slightly Off Centre."The blog is written by Mark Nenadic, the company's CEO, who describes himself as "slightly off centre" with a Monty Python sense of humor. He blogs from Vienna, Austria and also from Peterborough, U.K.One of the first things that hits you about this blog is its striking design. It features a backdrop of mountain peaks. I learned they are from a range in the Austrian Alps where Mark goes snowboarding.A few weeks ago we did our first review here of a blog designed specifically to promote eCommerce sales. The Fifteen Degrees-North blog is yet another blog associated with online commerce, but in a different way.Sometimes, as in the case of the blog we reviewed a few weeks ago, the blog is set up specifically to be the content component of an online storefront. Other times, as with Fifteen Degrees-North, the blog has evolved.Mark's blogging got started a long time ago with the Robot wars: "I guess I am a blog pioneer in that I started to Blog before there were Blogs. :) In early 99 some friends and I decided to compete in UK robot Wars (Battle Bots in the US). As it was a televised event in the UK with some 8 million viewers weekly I decided at an early stage to detail in a diary (Blog) our exploits for our fans. Back then Movable type was twinkle in some father's eye and so I had an online diary in HTML -- yukk, so much work! I have since dropped all those blogs and back filled 15dn with all the original posts, so my archives go back to 99."Along the way he's learned a thing or two about online marketing, and how to leverage blogs and RSS for selling online.What you get is a dose of serious reality about Internet marketing. When you first arrive at this blog, you see menu items such as "How to make a Fortune in 4 steps." You, think "uh oh."But, in reality, even experienced online marketers can learn something from this blog.Mark points out in post after post, that online sales are not easy. They're not the stuff of "get rich quick" dreams. They take hard work.Anyone who's ever made a dime selling online knows how true this is.You'll find nuggets of truth about selling online scattered throughout the blog, including this one where he says that online marketing is not about the technology: "As much as I LOVE good design I am the first to admit that it's the words that sell - not the software. Not the cool graphics. And not your expensive Flash presentation. A zillion visitors a week won't generate sales unless those visitors are persuaded to buy from you. And only words, you know these little characters unfolding before your very eyes! - powerful, persuasive, and professionally crafted words - will do it!"The Power: The Power of the Fifteen Degrees-North blog is in the way it selectively picks the brain of its CEO about how to sell online, and shares his insights. Even experienced Internet marketers can learn something. To read the other 52 PowerBlog Reviews, come on over to Small Business Trends. Ask us if you'd like to see your business blog reviewed. And sign up for our free monthly newsletter while you are at it.

PowerBlog Review: The Security Mentor

Anita Campbell — Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:24:36 EST

Editor's note: Over at Small Business Trends, we do a regular weekly series of reviews of business weblogs. This is the fifty-first in that series, called PowerBlog Reviews. We like to think that all the blogs we review in our PowerBlog Review series are helpful resources. But The Security Mentor has to be one of the most practical of all the blogs we've looked at.The Security Mentor provides "advice for normal people about computer and information security from Beryllium Sphere(R) LLC." (By the way, aren't blogs great, with their plain English topic descriptions? How different from traditional websites they are, where you can read the About section and still not have a clue what the business does.) The blog is a client resource and marketing tool for Beryllium Sphere LLC, a computer security consulting company in Redmond, Washington, USA. Fred Wamsley is the owner and chief blogger. His company specializes in serving small businesses, especially the SOHO (small office/home office) market. Fred has a crystal clear idea of who he is trying to reach with his blog, saying:'My target reader is someone motivated enough to do online research but unwilling to become a full-fledged nerd. The "computer person by default" at a small business, who becomes the de facto IT department because "s/he knows about those computers", is a perfect example.'He started blogging after a businessman friend suggested he start an online newsletter in blog form. The friend suggested it as a way to publicize what he brings to the table for small businesses. The Security Mentor solves a growing problem on the Web today: too much information. With all the billions of Web pages at our fingertips, it can be surprisingly difficult to find the answer to your questions. Information is often too general to be useful, or alternatively, is too detailed and assumes the reader starts with technical knowledge he or she doesn't have.Fred filters data and turns it into useful information that is understandable by non-technical people. As Fred tells me, he does a lot of professional reading. He is plugged into dozens of mailing lists and RSS feeds -- something the average small business owner doesn't have time to do, let alone know where to look for the information. When Fred comes across something of interest, he applies common sense, asks himself whether the item really matters to small businesses, and then translates it into plain English in the blog. This makes The Security Mentor one of the most readable technical weblogs out there. The blog does something else that blogs are quite good at: correcting misinformation. If a major news story is getting lots of attention but Fred doesn't feel people are getting it right, he will correct it. One of the other features about this blog I really like is the "Security Mentor Medal of Cluefulness." This is a mock award that Fred gives out to businesses that implement innovative security techniques. The first Medal was given out in January to U.S. Bancorp, for giving customers little devices that plug into USB ports and take the place of remembering passwords to log onto their online banking. The Power: The Power of The Security Mentor is in the way it filters data relating to a highly technical subject, pointing out just what small businesses need to know, and doing it in plain English.To read the other 50 PowerBlog Reviews, come on over to Small Business Trends. And sign up for our free monthly newsletter while you are at it.

Anti-Trending and Other Trends for 2005

Anita Campbell — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:58:33 EST

Want to know the trends that will be hot in 2005? Watts Wacker, the renowned futurist, recently spent some time with me in a telephone interview. I asked him specifically about trends that will impact small business during the coming year.Here is what Watts says we should expect to see heat up in 2005 and beyond. Enterprising small businesses -- and those that sell to small businesses -- may just find new opportunities from these trends.Watts says we can expect to see four macro-level trends that affect society in general and businesses of all sizes: 1. Rise of the Gray Hairs: One of the greatest demographic shifts in the United States ever will happen in 2005. Every single Baby Boomer will be 40 or over. He is one himself and as he points out, Baby Boomers tend to think they are the arbiters of taste and style. While that's not necessarily true, the aging Baby Boom generation is a significant force. 2. Premium is In: There is a continued move toward premium-ness. People are trading up from standard level. Think of Honda cars with heated seats. Or premium cookies.3. Trend of "Anti-trending": Companies will leverage their greatest strengths, even in contrarian ways. Hardee's new 1400 calorie hamburger is an example. Just as Wendy's, McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are seeing that fat could be the next tobacco in litigation, at same time they are offering 1400 calorie hamburgers. 4. Lock it Up: We will see more emphasis on safety and security. Keeping things safe will be at the top of people's minds. This applies to online security as well as security in the physical world, and it applies to everything from services to goods. As to trends specific to the small business market, Watts predicts we will see:Accelerated Online Sales: We are going to see an increase in the increase of buying online. Online shopping and technology has moved beyond the early adopters and the mainstream. It is now so well established it is drawing in the laggards. Watts drew an analogy from hearing a cell phone ringing during a church service. He said don't assume it is just a rude person. It is probably someone in his 70's who just purchased a cell phone for the first time who doesn't yet realize what the rest of us have known for some time about cell phone etiquette. Homeopathic Medicine: The recent decision by Merck withdrawing the drug Vioxx has people concerned over whether traditional medicine has been tested properly. People are taking more preventative medicines. Using natural remedies and alternative remedies will gain ground.Low-impact Makes an Impact: Aging Baby Boomers are looking for exercise that is easier on them. A perfect example is low-impact exercise such as Tai Chi and yoga. But not all low impact exercise is Eastern. Low impact includes swimming, spinning, and other exercise not as hard on aging bodies.Image Enhancement: No, not our personal images. Watts sees the cult trend of photoshopping (manipulating images using Photoshop software) going mainstream. He sees a rise in the use of technology to have images appear exactly the way we want them to create a new "reality." For instance, a blended family might eliminate a divorced spouse from a photo -- even add in the new spouse.Technology Convergence: He sees bundling between broadband, wireless and other communications technologies. Voice, wireless, Tivo, messaging -- they all will converge. You'll retrieve cell phone messages through your computer, and computer messages through your cell phone.Return of Loyalty: After years of saying "loyalty is dead" and "consumers are fickle," there are signs that when people find something that works, they stay with it. Expect to see the real power not only of service (i.e., how you provide something) but experience (i.e., how I feel about the result). This bodes well for the small business market -- and Watts suggests small businesses think about customer loyalty strategies. He points to the example of the high-end Dorothy Lane grocery stores, and how they stopped advertising. They took their ad money and developed a loyalty award program: the top 10 shoppers get an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. And so what are the most telling trends among these? Watts suggests that the trend of anti-trending is one of the most interesting trends for small retailers and other small businesses to explore. Adapted from a post that first appeared on the Small Business Trends blog.

Review of Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start

Anita Campbell — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:21:00 EST

Recently I received a review copy of Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start. I've been a big fan of Guy Kawasaki for a while. I've written about his columns and books several times, and I would have purchased this newest book anyway.The reason I admire Kawasaki so much is his down-to-earth advice, delivered with wit and bluntness. I don't have time for people pushing fad ideas -- or conceptual fluff. The more buzzwords-du-jour anyone uses, the less confidence they inspire in me.So, that said, here is my review of The Art of the Start:Read it. The book is worth your time. You can pick it up and read sections of it quickly (on a plane or in a doctor's waiting room), put the book down for a few days, and come back to it for another 20 minutes. It's that kind of book. In this day and age when distractions are endless, that's the only kind of book many of us have time to read.And don't let Kawasaki's day job as a venture capitalist throw you off. I am not a big fan of venture money. I've been there, done that. I know that venture capital is available only to a tiny percentage of businesses with high growth business models, and the allure of it is fool's gold to everyone else. In fact, I have spent a lot of time trying to convince entrepreneurs not to go after venture money, but to develop their small business by bootstrapping (i.e., without outside financial help). Despite being a venture capitalist, Kawasaki has an entire chapter on bootstrapping a business. That chapter alone is worth the book. Of course, there is a lot of good stuff in the rest of the chapters that bootstrappers can use, too.Let me give you a preview of some of what he writes about bootstrapping:Understaff and Outsource. This part was really interesting because Kawasaki admits he made a mistake in hiring too many people during the dotcom boom. Now he says "Do as I say, not as I did." Outsource as many functions as possible. Except don't outsource strategic functions like research and development. Outsource functions like processing payroll, which are not core to your business (unless you happen to be Paychex).Ship, Then Test. What he means is for a startup to get a product out the door and into customer hands as fast as possible. That way the company can start bringing in money and start getting customer feedback. No matter what he talks about, he always comes back to what I call the first rule of startups: cash is king. Build a Bottom-up Forecast. This is some of the best advice you could give an entrepreneur in a startup, but it is advice few people want to hear. Entrepreneurs have so many things to think about that it's tempting to do a broad swag for sales numbers. But unless you take the time to think through where your sales will come from on a weekly, even daily basis, your numbers won't be realistic -- I guarantee it. Kawasaki suggests a formula for how to build a bottom-up forecast, by calculating how many sales a sales rep can actually close in a given day, week, month, year. It's a handy formula -- and great advice.I could go on, but for the rest you'll have to read the book.And as Guy Kawasaki said when I emailed and asked him for the one piece of advice he would give any bootstrapping entrepreneur over all else: "Double the time you think it will take to ship and divide your sales projection by two -- this is what is most likely to happen."This review first appeared on the author's weblog, Small Business Trends.

The Tinbasher

Anita Campbell — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:29:57 EST

Editor's note: Over at Small Business Trends we do a regular weekly series of reviews of business weblogs. This is the forty-third in that series, called PowerBlog Reviews. This week's PowerBlog Review is about The Tinbasher Blog.Tinbasher is the blog of a small, sheet metal jobshop in the U.K. called Butler Sheet Metal.Now, before you go running for the No-doze and the toothpicks to hold open your eyelids, just stop. Because this blog is entertaining -- no, it's positively hilarious. I guarantee it will have you laughing out loud.Oh really, you say? Yes. Really. Try this recent Tinbasher post: You probably think that all this blogging business is rather fancy schmancy. That it's all maverick marketers operating from rather plush offices with Wi-Fi access coming out of their ears. And you probably think, by association, that I fit neatly into that little picture.If only.You'll be awfully pleased to know that I'm currently writing this from inside the electricity cupboard of an old Victorian foundry in some rundown part of East Lancashire. Not only that, but my blogging attire isn't exactly booted and suited. It tends to consist of three fleeces, a jumper and a donkey jacket - and that's just in the summer. I look more like Darth Vader when they took his helmet off than Mr. Business Blogger UK. Can I feel the force? I can't even feel my fingers.With us also being in a decrepit old foundry, not too far away from a river, we also tend to suffer from a bit of a vermin problem once in a while. Only the other week I was merrily tapping away at my keyboard when I heard a scratching and a rustling. I looked to see where it was coming from, then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this rat dangling off a couple of fluorescent tubes above my head.With a move slicker than anything you've ever seen in any Bruce Lee film, I managed to jump up, bend like a reed and flick the tubes deftly with my left wrist, sending little Roland back behind the corrugated sheet from where he dared appear in the first place. (There's another version of this tale involving an ear-splitting shriek and said rat falling off the tubes in terror, but I wouldn't pay much heed to that).The main person behind the Tinbasher blog is Paul Woodhouse, who reports that he blogs from "Colne in Lancashire - a tawdry little hell hole if ever there was one."Besides how entertaining the Tinbasher is, this blog is remarkable for the way it marries up a traditional industrial business with that trendiest of communications vehicles, the blog.And what a traditional business they are in -- a blog is a first for this industry. As Paul reports, Tinbasher is the only sheet metal blog on the Internet, saying, "Talk about ploughing a lone furrow. It's one thing being a big fish in a little pond, but I'm the only fish and that isn't healthy. I find the sheet metal industry -- especially in the UK -- to be a webphobic bunch."Butler Sheet Metal sees the blog as a way to help break into new markets, i.e. home decorative sheet metal and designer stainless steel. They have a business unit called Planters Direct, which manufactures and sells beautiful, contemporary stainless steel planters.Like many family businesses, they don't advertise and they don't have a marketing budget. The blog is a way to present the business as it is, with authenticity and transparency.To this end, Paul adopts an informal, slightly tongue-in-cheek tone. He writes on a variety of business-related subjects, interspersing occasional mentions about Butler Sheet Metal's services or Planter's Direct products.Varying the content is a smart move. That way, Paul keeps it interesting and attracts a much more diverse audience. He is crafting his content for what he thinks his audience wants to read, not simply navel-gazing on the company's industry. After all, the people who are likely to buy the beautiful planters are probably not metal enthusiasts or welders. Nor does he overwhelm readers with sales offers. The references to company services and products are scattered here and there, and just enough. Often they are casually woven into relevant posts on current events such as the price increases of steel. In the process of reading the news tidbit, the reader's interest in the products is peaked more so than if being bombarded with hard-sell messages right and left.Practically speaking, the blog brings traffic to the company's commercial websites. It also gives them a ready vehicle to communicate with customers in a true voice. The Power: The Power of The Tinbasher Blog is in the way it is being used to enter new markets and promote end-user sales, by a small family business with no marketing budget. It's a fascinating lesson in how to craft content that attracts a readership and subtly conveys a marketing message, without becoming soul-less and commercial. Come on over and read the other 42 PowerBlog Reviews at Small Business Trends. And sign up for our free monthly newsletter while you are at it.

Review of Opportunity Wales Blog

Anita Campbell — Mon, 6 Dec 2004 21:23:44 EST

Editor's note: Over at Small Business Trends, we do a regular weekly series of reviews of business weblogs. This is the forty-second in that series, called PowerBlog Reviews.Opportunity Wales is a blog serving small and medium sized businesses, (SMEs), which make up 99.9% of the businesses in Wales. The site is a European-funded initiative designed to help SMEs with eCommerce. The blog was launched in the spring of 2003 and is one section of a larger site. Anyone can register to post on the blog. The site gets registered users from all over the world.This is not your everyday, run-of-the-mill blog. It is unusual, even unique, in several ways. First, it is bilingual, with most of it written in both English and Welsh. The bilingual aspect is a legal requirement in Wales. As Paul Squires, the Head of Web Services, tells me: "...our site is almost completely bilingual in terms of original content - several thousand pages. This makes our site one of the largest Welsh-language sites on the Internet. Where we don't translate is in content sourced externally - including Weblog entries written by users. This is due to both resource impact our side, and the possibility that certain mannerisms (inflections, humour, slang etc) that one uses everyday in English may be mis-interpreted in Welsh - or indeed vice-versa. We overcome this by our 'Best of the Weblog' which is a commentary on the best postings each week, which we write up in both languages. So, whilst the interface of the Weblog can be swapped around, we leave it to the user to decide what they want to write and in what language, and then round up the best stuff in a commentary style for everyone to read each week in both English and Welsh."Another unusual attribute is that the weblog engine was built completely from scratch -- something you don't see everyday. The weblog was also a finalist in the UK government Web awards 2003 and finalist in the Information Management Awards 2003.A third unique factor is how precisely targeted a niche blog it is. The site is designed for Welsh SMEs located in special development zones, who want to learn more about eCommerce strategies. Reading this site you have no doubt who the target audience is. The target audience is rarely so clear on other blogs.Yet as targeted as the blog is to Welsh businesses, at the same time the site opens up a new world to non-Welsh readers. Through the blog, readers outside of Wales can learn about Wales and the Welsh language. The site operates as a kind of online ambassador, helping spread news and information about Welsh culture, language and business.A notable feature of the weblog -- and one of the best features in my opinion -- is the section entitled "Using Weblogs in Business." This is an 8-page resource section describing how small businesses can use blogs. This section of the site gives specific examples. It helps SMEs get up to speed quickly on business blogs. For anyone wanting to know how to leverage a business blog for their business, this section is a must read.The Opportunity Wales blog is maintained in Abercynon, Wales, about 15 miles north of the capital city of Cardiff.The Power: Opportunity Wales proves that a blog can be used to serve a niche audience and at the same time introduce the world to that niche audience, its culture and its language. To read the other 40 PowerBlog Reviews, come on over to Small Business Trends. And sign up for our free monthly newsletter while you are at it.