CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell blogged recently about the Sporting News' decision to add blogs to its website. His take is that the new emphasis might save the publication from a long slide into irrelevance. Pulling some excerpts from his posting:

Why am I visiting the Sporting News? Because they're making moves that could save them...

Their Sporting blog is formatted like FanHouse, which I like. Though I think the formatting and the font needs help, and there's obviously little traffic at this point judging from the comments, I believe they are certainly on their way.

While I'm still not sold on podcasting, I am sold on blogs. Some blogs. Good blogs. It's how many people like to read today. Short, quick, funny, relevant comments instead of full articles.

I think there are some useful messages from this posting, regardless of whether you're blogging just to create content or blogging to grow a business:

  1. Blogs are becoming a preferred channel for information. There's so much raw information coming at people these days, people are turning to blogs to sift through the noise. If this is the way people are getting information about current events, is it not too much of a stretch to speculate that people will also start to use blogs to aid buying decisions?
  2. Content quality is very important. Note that he uses the the adjectives "some" and "good" in front of "blogs". The limited time that drives people to blogs also works against bloggers. Unless you blog well, you won't get readers. Relevance and substance are key to keep the reader engaged.
  3. Poor site design can hurt you. First impressions are important, so the layout and navigation better work from the get-go. I wonder how many blog visitors will not have the patience of Mr. Rovell, simply choosing not to come back?

These points make a compelling case for business blogging and choosing Compendium Blogware for your blogging platform. Point (1) answers the question of why a business should be blogging. Points (2) and (3) answer the question "Why Compendium?"

When you set up your company blogs with Compendium, you get not only an easy-to-use platform for creating content, you get the infrastructure for controlling the quality of the content, and you get the expertise that will help you create a well designed and effective website.