Nice article in today’s New Zealand Herald about businesses blogging. I’m quoted extensively in it (yay!). Here’s a summary of what I had to say:

• Good corporate blogs can develop a loyal readership, which means a company can build relationships with its current and potential customers and get them to interact more closely and more frequently with its brand/products/services.
• An example of a big business that’s joined the blogosphere and done it well: General Motors’ smallblock engine division. Their blog is effective in making GM look like a bunch of human beings instead of some faceless corporate giant.
• The key is to be transparent and real – if it’s just some highly sanitised PR message coming through in a blog format, nobody wants to see that.
• Blogging increases your likelihood of getting blogged by other bloggers. Getting mentioned in a popular blog, such as gadget-oriented Gizmodo, can cause a company’s sales to skyrocket.
• Microsoft’s Robert Scoble is one of the Internet’s most-credible corporate bloggers. I’d go so far as to say that he’s the new voice of Microsoft. Scoble has been given a loose leash by Microsoft in what he reports about the company, a position he has used to become something of a legend among bloggers. But, it also puts him in a tricky position. He recognizes that he’s playing with dynamite. He could say something that sets people or the media off. So he’s got to be careful with his blogging. But on the other hand he really can’t hold back too much because then he’s no longer being ‘real’.

The article mention was a result of our (Netconcepts’) PR initiative relating to the launch of our business blog consulting services in New Zealand (we’ve already been offering such services to the U.S. market for a while now). To my knowledge, there are no other interactive agencies in New Zealand besides Netconcepts that are offering blog consulting. Am I right in that assertion? Please post a comment if you know of any.