If you’ve never blogged before, a 2005 BusinessWeek article entitled “Blogging Will Change Your Business,” by Heather Green and Stephen Baker, is probably a good place to start.
For millions of would-be bloggers, the article was the first, most comprehensive, and still the most reader-friendly primer on business blogging.
Green and Baker have now updated their work. “Beyond Blogs: Social Media Will Change Your Business” arrived on newsstands last week. Like their earlier piece, “Beyond Blogs” is far from definitive, far from comprehensive, and a little behind the curve. Rachel Sklar delivers a well-written analysis of the article over at the Huffington Post.
Not everyone shares the luxury I enjoy of tinkering with new Internet toys all day. Some folks have to do real work for a living. Still, the tools Green and Baker report on – YouTube, Twitter, iTunes and more – have real value for everyone from lima bean farmers to long-haul truckers.
The new BusinessWeek report is hardly a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the complexities of social media. It’s more of a Cliff’s Notes recap…and that’s all it needs to be. Like its precursor, “Beyond Blogs” will do what an army of tech geeks and analysts can’t do: make social media accessible to the average American.