Growing Phenomenon Of Business Blogs

Aug. 18 (KGO) -- Do you blog? A blog is an online version of a diary - a personal journal that people write, then share with everyone on the Internet. Blogs are fast becoming more than chatter about hobbies or politics or special interests. Now there are business blogs.

Advertising is still an important way for companies to sell their products. The newest tool, though, is the business blog. For instance, the vice chairman of General Motors writes one, as does an executive at aircraft maker Boeing. It's a place for customers and companies to interact.

Paul Rosenfeld, Intuit: "Small businesses, if you think about it, do this all day long. It's called talking with your customers every day that they come into the store or every time the landscaper mows your lawn and stops to say hi, and this is just a high-tech way of doing it."

Paul Rosenfeld's company has a blog too. Mountain View based Intuit gets as many as 700 visitors a day who use its QuickBooks online edition.

Paul Rosenfeld: "We certainly get lots and lots of comments from customers saying, 'I really appreciate the honesty. I can see you're a really hard-working group of people that care a lot about us as customers,' and I think that's enough for us to say, we know in our gut we're doing the right thing."

Almost a third of all Internet users have visited a blog site this year. New blogs are being created at a rate of one every 7.4 seconds. That's 12,000 new blogs a day. Readers make 275,000 entries a day.

Steve Broback, Business Blog conference organizer: "If they comment on their experiences with products... that people do read it, and it can reflect in better service and modifications being made to products."

The value of blogs prompted several hundred companies to sign-up for this all-day seminar.

There's a saying in business... if a customer has a good experience, they'll tell someone else. If they have a bad experience, they'll probably tell 10 others. Now consumers have a stronger voice than ever, reaching potentially hundreds if not thousands on a blog with just a few keystrokes.

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