Group Blogs for Businesses and Business Communities

In the light of some conversations I’ve had with business owners in various fields, I have a hunch – and that’s all – that some of them could be more immediately interested in the business building and staff development possibilities of a group blog, or a blog portal with capacity for individual member blogs and perhaps some other sophisticated content management resources, than in what an external-facing blog could do to help them make an impact in the market.

I think there is also scope for group blogs or portals+blogs for local business networks and professional associations. 

I have been aware of a couple of impressive products that are evidently doing good business at the corporate level - iUpload and Blogtronix – and have spoken to representatives of both. In fact, I spent a couple of hours just before Christmas in stimulating conversation over coffee and then lunch with Jim Morrison, CEO Europe for Blogtronix. 

Each of those products requires a financial commitment – which for what they provide is I believe reasonable.

Today, in preparing a post for the LinkedIn Bloggers Group of which I am a moderator, and with a couple of tips from colleagues, I have been doing a bit of research into products/services of this kind which are available without a financial commitment. As I haven’t spent a lot of time on the exercise, this reference is just a mention and doesn’t pretend to be a review. The products are 21Publish , Zimbio and Webjam. i’m not suggesting that these or similar products are adequate as substitutes for sophisticated products like iUpload and Blogtronix.  It’s more that I’m sharing a bit of what I discovered today. I’m keen to hear of more.

I’ve been a member of 21Publish for ages now, although not actually utilising the system. The product is promoted as “the turnkey solution to start your own branded community” and you can sign up for a free account. The site links to a few examples of organizations using the system (whether the free version or a paid one I don’t know), such as the MBA Blogs set up by Business Week Online and badged as “powered by 21Publish”. I have a sense that 21Publish is a lot more operationally effective than when I joined in August 2005.

Zimbio was new to me and describes its Public Portals as ”information guides to help members quickly get down the learning curve on any topic of interest”. I signed up and listed my Thinking Home Business blog in the proffered box and must have said yes to some other function because I found soon that various posts from that blog had been copied to Zimbio portals. I can see I need to look into that some more and find out just how it works.

Webjam seems very much in beta, describes itself as a social media ecosystem and answers its own question “Why Webjam?” as follows:

Webjam is a flexible tool that allows you to manage multiple pages, on your own or with people you invite, with just one account. You can easily collect and share information from external sources, mix it with your own thoughts and opinions, and get feedback.

They also have privacy controls so you can set boundaries to access, depending on whether you have a personal, community or professional site. They give examples of those but when I tried to check them out a message appeared saying I could only look at the site if I was a member. Fair enough, but it would have been good to have a notice of that before I started clicking.

I’m not so much suggesting or recommending any of these sites for a business or professional group. My intention is more to provide some examples of the kind of group blogging and group/community knowledge portals that are appearing, beyond the older bulletin board idea, and which could be of interest particularly to small business. 

Tools like iUpload and Blogtronix – and perhaps the other products mentioned here – offer more than group blogs, but I believe the short story is that Web 2.0 is beginning to deliver some very interesting products for business and communities.

Thanks to leading European blogger Philippe Borremans for alerting me to Zimbio and Webjam.