I spoke to Andrew Heavens from The Times (London) last week about corporate blogging and CEO blogs in particular. The resulting article is here - unfortunately, The Times restricts access when it comes to foreign web users (how annoying!), so here is an excerpt and what I had to say to Andrew.

One of the most important lessons for aspirant corporate bloggers, according to Big Blog Company associate Jackie Danicki, is how to write. Lesson One: drop the corporate speak. "It's not just getting on your blog and talking about 'This is why our product is the best and you should buy it'. That is not the point and people see through that.

"You basically have a lot of CEOs who are sitting there and writing about what they know. Also adding personal things in, talking off-topic, about their holidays. ..It gets readers to feel an affinity."

Public relations website thenewpr.com currently lists 80 up and running blogs by CEOs, the bulk of them based in France and America. So far, the only UK blog listed is run by none other than the Big Blog Company. But that will change, says Ms Danicki. "We will catch up. It took us longer to get broadband too."

Executives start blogging for a number of reasons, according to Ms Danicki. They want to raise their personal profile. They want to reach out to customers and members of their own staff without going through official channels and PR departments. They want to be seen as a forward thinking company up to date with the latest trend.

They also want to chew over ideas and share thoughts with other people in their field.

There are currently about four million blogs out there, according to the Big Blog Company, with another 15,000 added every day. The entire "blogosphere" is split into thousands of self-sustaining universes focused on particular areas from venture capital (try Fred Wilson's - http://avc.blogs.com/) to sheet metal manufacture (Tinbasher - http://tinbasher.blogspot.com/). The bloggers within each universe spend large parts of their time commenting on each other's posts, taking on ideas and leaving questions for others to answer.

That cross-pollination across the blogging network can lead to some unexpected results. "The real value is things that you don't expect," says Ms Danicki. "I know from our perspective, the amount of people we've ended up talking to and doing business with just simply thanks to our blog is amazing. Producers in Hollywood. People from publishing companies in the States. People who in another time without this network we would never have made contact with."

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