Debbie Weil is a corporate blogging and social media expert, online marketing consultant, speaker and author of The Corporate Blogging Book (Portfolio). She consults with large companies, CEOs and senior executives on how to create blogs that connect with customers and attract media attention.

Been collecting these for a week or so.

• Ran across this nifty page on Robert’s Echo blog. Includes everything from the "origin" of blogs, stats on blog readership, recommended PR blogs, link to a Forrester Research executive summary, lists of internal and external corporate blogs and more.

• Another page with all things blog (including links to RSS tutorials and basic blog definitions) penned by the Singapore-based Rambling Librarian.

• Comprehensive list from Dave Taylor’s Intuitive Life blog with links to other articles.

• 101 writing tips from Kari Chisholm on writing a thought leadership blog. (He writes a grassroots advocacy blog.)

I’m delighted to report that Gary Grates, VP Corporate Communications, North America for General Motors has accepted my invite to be the third panelist on IABC’s corporate blogging panel on June 27, 2005. (Here is the description of the session, part of IABC’s international annual conference in Washington DC.) Gary, who is known as a "thought leader" on change management and effective employee-management relations, is a regular contributor to GM’s Fastlane blog. The other two panelists are Paul Rosenfeld, GM of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online Edition and Kevin Holland, VP Communications of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and the force behind ACCABuzz.

Cool news. I’ve been asked to moderate a panel on corporate blogging for IABC’s annual conference in Washington D.C. on June 27, 2005. I’ve invited Paul Rosenfeld, GM of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online Edition and the force behind QuickBooks Online blog, along with Kevin Holland, VP Communications of Air Conditioning Contractors of America and creator of the ACCABuzz blog to join me. To round out the panel I’ve invited one of the top-dog bloggers for GM’s Fastlane blog (not Bob Lutz but someone who should be even better because of his inside perspective). Waiting to hear back.

Here’s what IABC chairman Warren Bickford says  about our event in his new blog. He mentions it in the same breath as the announcement that Mark Hurd,  HP’s new CEO, will be the plenary speaker. Hey, business blogging is going big time! More TK…

Paul Rosenfeld, General Manager of Intuit’s QuickBooks Online, and his team had a great idea: why not start a blog to communicate with - and learn from - their 35,000 customers?

Paul is an informal kind of guy. A staff member suggested the blog one sunny Friday in Mountain View, CA. Paul said, "Why not." When he came in on Monday, lo and behold, the staffer had created a QuickBooks Online blog using TypePad. It was customized with the green header of the QuickBooks Online product page but wasn’t an exact replica.

“Hey,” Paul said. “This is great. Let’s go with it!”  Or something to that effect. The point, as he puts it, was to just start. (And by hosting the blog externally, he didn’t have to get on corporate IT’s lengthy action list.)

More Action / Less Talk
“Everyone (in big companies) thinks in terms of PowerPoint and big projects and lots of money. Our blog is an example of a lot of action and very little talking,” he said in an interview. “We’re very proud of it. It’s the first blog at Intuit.” (One other exists, for TurboTax, but it’s only open to registered users.)

Here’s a look at how Rosenfeld has developed the QuickBooks Online blog with the help of a handful of staffers, what they write about and lessons learned for other corporate managers harboring secret thoughts of blogging…

Continue reading Case Study of QuickBooks Online Blog