Blogs for Entrepreneurs: idea banks

Business blogs are many and various.

They can help with you own marketing, if you participate by making your own postings.

Above all, they are a treasure trove. For startups, good ones can almost act like silent advisory boards.

Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day

• There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day
• 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs
• 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006
• 51% of blog readers shop online
• Blog readers average 23 hours online each week
• 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog
• Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs.

So this is nearly a must for business. The only trouble is that you will find that it takes time. Blogging also takes Commitment and Consistency. Those are my two 'C's but Mike Sansone has three more 'C's. Watch his video for an explanation.

The list is Will's selection and has not only a focus on business startup, but also on sustainabiliity.

Entrepreneurship Blogs worth visiting

Here is a selection that you make like to consider as a source of creative business startup and development ideas.

How to Change the World is Guy Kawasaki's blog. As well as having been an 'Apple original', he runs Garage Technology Ventures, a VC company. His blog is something that takes a good chunk of his time and unlike some that are quickly moribund, he follows the blogging 'rules' of regular posting, lots of interest, many links, acknowledgement of others. It is so good that he can get away with sometimes having very long posts stuffed with pictures (by him).

Sustainability by Design - John Ehrenfeld's wonderful blog—full of deep insights on business sustainability.

Young Entrepreneur is dedicated to providing information and advice to entrepreneurs around the world. Founders Matthew Toren & Adam Toren have many teaching and research interests including marketing, business development, entrepreneurial emergence and strategy
management, business growth techniques, innovation and new venture creation.

Killer Startups may not be an appealing name, but the site, though not really a blog, reviews 15 Internet startups every day (!) and taking a look may lead you to wonderful ways to improve your business performance.

Duct Tape Marketing is almost essential reading on small business (ad not so small) marketing. John Jantch's blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for small business and marketing and is a Harvard Business School featured marketing site.

Springwise is one of my favorites. It is based on a network of 8,000 spotters scan the globe for smart new business ideas, delivering instant inspiration to entrepreneurial minds. It is brief, graphic and in every case gives you links to the outfit they are talking about.

Bootstrap Me is steady, practical and full of ideas. It often has video clips and plenty of links for the reader to follow up. Shawn Hessinger offer info on lots of tools and there a links to them you can access any time.

Escape From Cubicle Nation is Patricia Slim's way of helping you move from corporate prisoner to thriving entrepreneur. Her book of the same name is due out from Penguin/Portfolio in the Spring of 2009.

The Entrepreneurial Mind is by Jeff Cornwall who runs the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University. He is the author of a new book on Bootstrapping (January 2009). The blog is a rich seam to mine.

Small Business Labs focuses on the key social, technology and business trends impacting small business. A very helpful source of data and a tightly run blog. It is run by Emergent Research who offer insight and analysis on the new economy. They produce and annual survey of the Top Ten Small Business Trends.

Mind Drift is written by David Hauser who share a a lot of his ideas about entrepreneurship, work culture, and technology. His blog is a journey through the mind of an entrepreneur (him) as well as the minds of other creators, producers, and innovators.

Small Business Trends is an online publication for small business owners, entrepreneurs and the people who interact with them. It offers a variety of features to help you stay informed about the small business market.

The Next Billion—Bringing together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.

For something different, try Christine.com—she is a former Buddhist monk, software engineer, geisha trainee, entrepreneur, venture capitalist. Her approach to life & business is unique.

While not really a blog, Business Exchange is a new Business Week website that allows users to create business topics, collaboratively aggregate content from the entire Web and connect with other business focused users around these topics. So you can leap from there to all sorts of very well indexed and up-to-date material from blogs, magazines and newspapers...

...and of course, my own: The Business Owl's Blog. I produce it using WordPress. WordPress is open source so free to use and if you use wordpress.com you can pay a small amount to have it advertising-free and you can also buy your own URL so that wordpress does not appear in the name (both of these I have done).

Six reasons why a startup should have a blog

1. It will differentiate your business. Make sure you grab your audience and that yours is the 'reference' blog in your field.
2. As I suggested above, it is not difficult to do, though it requires effort to do well and to make sure that is it well optimized for blog searches.
3. It is your opportunity to say things about the business and your sector in an interesting way and without the formality of your website. It is a very direct form of communication.
4. It can provide a very good way to speak with your customers and potential customers that is very 'sticky'. You can be honest and create dialog.
5. It is much less expensive than many forms of advertising and when you get proficient, it is much more effective. You can correct, update, revise very easily.
6. The business will be found. This is especially true if you get smart at blog marketing. You can do many things to promote the blog for its own intrinsic value, that may prove difficult to do when you are directly promoting the business.

Once the blog gains traction, comments of visitors will help shape it and provide you with invaluable guidance on what the market is looking for.

Erin Blaskie of Business Blog Consulting says, “I have met a number of brand new people through my blog. Some of these people became clients, others were just frequent readers that became friends and others asked me to collaborate with them on special projects. By having a blog, you can become a place where people visit to learn about what it is you are writing about but also so that they can meet you, get to know you and someday work with you. You can build a community and allow other people to meet through you which then allows people to talk about you and get your name out there.”