Jupiter and Forrester Get on the Blogging Train

Forrester launched their blogs yesterday, starting with 6 analysts blogging on a variety of topics. They join Jupiter Research and the rest of the world in blogging. It's about time. Not only is a way to generate traffic, but, more importantly for firms like Jupiter and Forrester, its a way to widen their nets and generate field insights. If they do it right, they should be able to generate some decent give and take with their readers and that, in turn, should give them some valuable insights and feedback.

Some advice from a prospective reader:

Don't sell your research. Reference it, give away some goodies, but don't telll us how smart you are. Prove it and let us make up our own minds

Go Out on a Limb - Even if you're wrong, you can learn a lot by testing the waters with your interpretations. Trust your readers to assume you're at least tryi ng to get it right. Then, if you realize you're wrong, share the thought process that got you to that decision.

Allow comments - Forrester does, Jupiter doesn't. Unless you're afraid that either a) no one will comment or b) they'll disagree with you, the blogs should allow comments. (psst - it's good for flow back to your site, too. )

Comments

[Michael Gartenberg]

We do offer a variety of ways to engage us other than comments. There's a feedback mechanism at http://feedback.jupiterweb.com/jrblog.html as well as the new "blog with us" program".

You do know that Forrester blogs are for their clients only and aren't open to the public.

[Garrick Van Buren]

Seems to me the long term value of both Forrester and Jupiter is the conversation they start. Better leveraging weblogs, both publicly and privately is an excellent way to do that.

I've expanded this thought at http://mnteractive.com/blogging-for-business.