Free Biz Blog
By Rob Safuto on Mar 29, 2006 in Blogging, Observations | Tags: Blogging
Josh Hallett is reporting that a commercial blog hosting company called BlogZerk is offering a free business blog to one company located in the Orlando, Florida area.
Josh’s post is a little misleading (unintentionally I’m sure) as it fails to state that only one company will actually be picked to get a free blog. The rest will have the choice of going to a paid plan or abandoning their service.
Also, BlogZerk is requiring that the new business blogs Trackback to the original BlogZerk post about the contest in order to be considered in the content. There’s a problem with this approach. Many new bloggers might not even understand what a Trackback is.
For the record, a Trackback is like a tip of the hat to a post that spurs you to write about something. Most blogs have a Trackback address that you can insert into your blog’s software when you publish the related post. Doing this will automatically ping the blog that inspired you and place a link back to your post on the bottom of their post. Confusing? It can be. Stick around this blog and I’ll explain it in more detail in the near future.
In any case, BlogZerk’s contest is a good idea. But it might suit them a little better if they skipped the Trackback requirement and opened up the contest to business blogs outside the Orlando area. And with all the good, free blogging services out there they should also consider allowing a few more businesses to take advantage of the free one year of service. I’m sure the publicity that they would get from those businesses using their blog platform would more than pay for BlogZerk’s cost of service in the long run.
[tags] Social Media, Blogging[/tags]
Josh Hallett | Mar 29, 2006 | Reply
It was probably vague since I did it in a hurry….you know those damn bloggers, never checking their facts
Rob Safuto | Mar 30, 2006 | Reply
LOL :). No harm no foul. Looks like they have a good service with some pretty nice templates.
Chris Scott | Mar 30, 2006 | Reply
Thanks for the post about our contest and suggestions. We are focusing on the Orlando area for this one since we’d like to see what the interest is here locally before opening it up to a wider audience.
Regarding the trackback, the idea was to engage people in digging a bit deeper and understanding blogging and also using our software. However, you make a good point that this may confuse or turn off potential users.
Rob Safuto | Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
Sounds like a good plan. I looked a little in your documentation and saw that you explain all the key terms, including trackbacks. I’m finding that education on the finer points is one of the keys to getting businesses to adopt blogging as a medium.
Good luck with the contest. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see how your service progresses.