Jason Fried, Owner 37signals
DL Byron, Principal Texuradesign Inc.
Molly Holzschlag, President Molly.com Inc.
Jim Coudal, President Coudal Partners
Robert Scoble, Evangelist Microsoft Corp.

How to build your brand with blogs was a great panel discussion lead by some true innovators. I tell you, I really enjoy listening to Jason Fried from 37signals, this guy has got it going on.

There was a lot of talk about transparency vs. authentic. Molly Holzschlag from Molly.com pressed that transparent is not being authentic. She stressed that a blog is designed to be authentic, and you must keep your voice and be real.  Scoble brought up the power of comments on your blog. They all thought that comments was a requirement on a blog (I personally do not agree.) Scoble did bring up the fact that Google loves comments, and will drive more traffic to your site. Jason jumped in on this and said that he thinks that any negative comments on your blog will be washed out by all the additional traffic you site gets.

In summary, building your brand with blogs works if you do it properly.  I think that if you are going to have a business blog then the most important key is staying authentic, or as Chris Busch wrote “rawthentic!”.  Don’t start a business blog until you have this figured out!

tags: sxsw | blogging
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