2chicksblogging.com – Blogging for Change Training since 2008

Blogging from Home? Expecting company? Perhaps you need a couch dress?

NUJ: “effing blogs” – One Man and His Blog.

Tracing the orignin of a post to his blog, a journalist discovers the critical post was sent from someone in the same reporter’s union that he has membership in. Take a breath, think, “a blog is just a self-publishing tool” and relax all you blogger/journalists out there. Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the link.

Holy parody Batman I just saw over at the Fake Chuck Westfall blog read fake Chuck Westfall blog folks, sorta like that fake Steve Jobs blog from a while back that Canon Inc. and some lawyerish type named Douglas E. Mirell from Loeb & Loeb are trying to shut poor fake Chuck down.

via Canon Has No Sense of Humor, Tries to Shut Down Fake Chuck Westfall Blog — Update: And Fails | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection.

Though less than half of small businesses do have a website, the ones that do are not happy overall with their online marketing.

Problems with business websites include:

• 51% believe both the quality and ability of their site to acquire new customers is only “fair” or “poor”
• 30% of business owners feel that they typically do a better job of marketing than a close competitor
• 78% believe they advertise in the same places as their competitors
• Only 7% of small business owners say their primary marketing goal is to get more visitors to their website
• 61% spend less than three hours a week marketing their website
• 99% of small business owners are directly involved in the marketing
• 65% believe it is very important to know where their customers come from
• Only 9% are satisfied with their online marketing efforts
• 78% of small business owners dedicate 10% or less of their budget to marketing Of those, 30% do no Internet advertising

via MediaPost Publications Small Business Not Keeping Up With Online Presence 02/13/2009.

Our workshops or custom training sessions are reasonable and provide a big payoff for the small business owner. Organize your business web site around a blog and you will save time updating it, find easy ways to market and publicize the site, learn more about your customers, at least the ones that are online. Contact us today for an estimate and training at your site.

KCNN: Citizen Journalists’ Guide to Open Government.

Not every, or even most bloggers are reporters, but lots are citizens. Though you may never intend to blog about government issues as a journalist, the time may come when you face a NIMBY issue or need to work in your community to get the local government to do its duty. This Knight Center guide provides good links for the blogger turned investigative reporter as well as the frustrated tax-payer who needs to light a fire under a recalcitrant elected official.

What Do You Spend Most Time Doing on Your Blog? asks ProBlogger, who then lists these as blogging-related activities:

• Blog Design
• Search Engine Optimization
• Guest Posting on Other Blogs
• Editing Guest Posts on Your Own Blogs
• Moderating Comments and Interacting with Readers
• Networking and Promotion to Other Bloggers
• Social Media Marketing
• Monetization
• Reading Other Blogs in your Niche
• Reading about Blogging
• Watching Statistics/Metrics

2chicksblogging.com spends time with all of these, to varying degrees. We can help you or your organization with any of these, with learning what these mean, and in getting your blogging skills up to the task you want to complete.

We at 2chicksblogging.com are *NOT* tax experts, however, we think this issue is overblown and sensationalist. The IRS defines a gift as ““You make a gift if you give property (including money), or the use of or income from property, without expecting to receive something of at least equal value in return.”

We stress that for our blogging clients and bloggers we talk to, that you are not giving anything away. Our whole point is that audience attention, time, and “eyeballs” are all forms of currency, though not not money. When you contribute content as a serious, professional blogger, you are expecting a return of equal or more value than what you contributed. You expect to get a reputation boost, more eyeballs, and subsequent business because of your initial action (creating content for exchange.)

The bottom line: StinkyJournalism.org has uncovered a real hornet’s nest for both for-profit media companies’ business models and citizen journalists who must now examine how much work they have “donated” to any one media outlet over the past year.

via The Unspoken Peril for “Citizen Journalists” Surprise! You Owe the IRS Some Gift Tax!.