Business blog example 1: sharpen the saw

As part of the lead-up to my panel discussion about business blogs at BMA, I’m taking a look at business blogs:

This is the kind of blog I like.

Industrial Quick Search launched a ‘newsroom’ blog around the beginning of the year. In the past it was mostly press releases by customers and IQS marketing content.

But now it is a newsroom. A couple of the SEO team at IQS are blogging there.

Here’s a great post of original content, that isn’t a shill for their business, or fake punditry. It is reporting, observation, and commentary worth the read:

Is it springtime for US Manufacturers?

This piece is nice to read just because it gives a helpful vision of the potential end of this recession. Hmm, not too many business bloggers doing that.

Other times the articles are less newsworthy, but they are interesting discussions of the products their advertisers sell.

At first doing such a newsroom seemed like a waste of time to me. Too much content for not enough value (traffic). Admittedly, Marjorie from IQS told me they don’t really do it specifically for the SEO value anyway.

But I now realize: what better way to let an SEO staffer ‘sharpen their saw’ than to let them write freely about the products they are trying to help sell by being found by Google.

I’d see it as an opportunity for a company’s staff to step out from behind the curtain a little and see what happens. Maybe like Google lets its staff work on side-projects for 20% of their time.

Play, learn, share, experiment, & connect.

Its an investment in the company and the staff.