Since Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, like the VT KnowledgeWorks companies, is in many ways a high-tech start-up, I use it as a case study in entrepreneurship.
This post is part of a series I have been writing on business blogs and how they work.
Of all the blogs in the universe, from those covering perfume to politics, the one chosen for the front page of the Personal Journal section of the print edition of The Wall Street Journal on 4/10/08 (The Blogger Mom: In Your Face) was Dooce.com. Already on the Technorati list of top 100 blogs, what followed for Dooce was an off-line media blitz which the blog's author covers in posts such as this one.
In his 2005 ebook, Who's There?, Seth Godin defines blogs in three categories: cat blogs, boss blogs, and viral blogs. Godin writes, "Cat blogs are blogs for and by and about the person blogging...Boss blogs are used to communicate to a defined circle of people...[Viral blogs] are changing the face of marketing, journalism and the spread of ideas...They're viral blogs because the goal of the blog is to spread ideas."
Part of what I'm trying to do with Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, to use Godin's phrasing, is write a viral cat blog.
Dooce and Inside VT KnowledgeWorks have in common that they are both written in first person, about the writer's inner life, in relation to her experience with her world. That's the cat blog part.
The world of Dooce's writer is a family. Mine is a high-tech business incubator and accelerator. I'm sharing and spreading the ideas created at VT KnowledgeWorks. That's the viral part.
Inside VTKW is also a business blog. I got a late-life master's degree in counseling--I know people cannot be "made" to do anything. Yet a business blog has the goal of inspiring people to take action.
I wrote in this post two months ago: "For the Inside VT KnowledgeWorks blog to be successful by this writer's standards, all it would take is for one person to contact one of the 31 Member Companies of VT KnowledgeWorks, saying in a voice mail or writing in an e-mail, 'I read about you in a blog. I want to be your _______ .' (Fill in the blank: venture capitalist, angel investor, vendor, partner, employee, customer.)"
Inside VTKW launched on November 30, 2007. On April 30, 2008, this viral cat business blog was 5 months old.
If you're a reader of this blog, thank you. If you've written a comment on this site, thank you. If you've informed me of a typo, thank you.
How do blogs work? If you Googled yourself 5 months ago, you would not have seen an Inside VTKW post about yourself in the first page of search results.
Today, if you have been written about in this blog, you may well find yourself on the first page of search results. Google seems to like us. We can be found--by a venture capitalist, angel investor, vendor, partner, employee, customer.
That's a very important way blogs work.
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On my Inside VT KnowledgeWorks wish list? A TypePad expert with whom to consult on weblog design and advanced TypePad features (TypePad is the online blogging software I use to create this site). I placed an ad in the Roanoke Times and await a phone call!
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