We’d like to welcome two new weblogs to our sidebar. We nicked them both from Joe Paduda’s blog, one of our frequent reads.
DB’s Medical Rants is a blog by an academic general internist who comments on medical issues and the current state of medicine. Recent posts range from how patients are increasingly participating in decision making to physician report cards.
The Health Care Blog by Matthew Holt offers excellent and informed commentary on the healthcare industry and public policy issues related to healthcare.
And if the healthcare side of the equation is where your interest lies, we encourage you to check out Medlogs where you can access newsfeeds for dozens of blogs by physicians, nurses, and industry insiders. We have a variety of other good reads in our sidebar, too – check them out.
Posts Tagged ‘blogs’
Healthcare weblogs added to our sidebar
Thursday, July 28th, 2005Tags: blogs, healthcare
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Business blog news roundup
Thursday, May 27th, 2004Workers comp case law – Go visit Judge Robert Vonada at PAWC – he’s been posting some interesting case law this month. His May 25 post is a reversed finding for a claim of mental/mental disability arising from homosexual advances by a supervisor. The disability allegedly was triggered by post traumatic stress disorder from service in Vietnam.
Working Poor – Thanks to Business Pundit who points us to a special section in Business Week on the working poor.
NIOSH reorganization – A must-read post from Jordan Barab analyzes the potential fallout from the recent CDC announcement about a reorganization of NIOSH (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health).
Tags: blogs, employment news, legal news, medical news, weblogs, workers compensation
Posted in Misc. | Comments Off on Business blog news roundup
A tip of the hat…
Tuesday, March 30th, 2004Kudos and confetti to Jordan Barab at Confined Space who marked one year of fine blogging yesterday. He is a dedicated and tireless voice for the safety of the worker and we learn something new and important (albeit disturbing) every time we visit his site. Thanks for your efforts, Jordan — it’s excellent and important work that you do — one could only hope that we would all see the day when you would have less sad news to report.
A warm note of appreciation is also in store for Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends. Yesterday, we enjoyed the unexpected distinction of having Workers Comp Insider featured in her PowerBlog Review. Very kind of you to say such nice things, Anita — it’s a mutual admiration society. Visit the sidebar at Small Business Trends to read about other business blogs that have been featured in this series – it’s a good way to explore how businesses are using weblogs.
We’ve added a few new blogs and resources to our sidebar that visitors might want to note…Benefitsblog features tax, benefits, and ERISA law commentary and news; the HealthLawBlog tracks state and local news and matters in health law; and rawblogXport focuses on job safety, union news, and worker rights — they are all worth a visit.
A few more sidebar additions: check out Occupational Hazards, a news headline aggregator on issues related to workplace health & safety; and if you just can’t get enough blogs, The Blog Herald highlights news from the blog world.
Tags: blogs
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Business blogging: It’s a blog world after all
Thursday, March 25th, 2004Fast Company has an interesting series of articles on the corporate weblog as a knowledge management tool. The primary article makes the case that weblogs are a cost effective, flexible, and efficient way for teams to communicate via intranet. It cites one example of use by an insurer:
The Hartford Financial Services Group is already finding success using blogs in one of its mobile groups. A team of 40 field technology managers, who serve as links between The Hartford’s network of insurance agents and the home office, set up a blog in August. They use it to share information about e-commerce features and solutions to technology problems. Before, email and voice mail sufficed, but email threads would die, and there was no way to search past shared information. “We don’t get a chance to talk with each other as often as we’d like,” says Steve Grebner, one of The Hartford’s field managers, who thinks of the blog a little like a town square. “To me, it’s like there’s 14–or 40–brains out there, and you might as well tap into that knowledge base.”
That’s a good use for weblogs, but it would be a shame if business America largely confines blogging to internal use. The article points to a few problems with taking a business blog to the public sphere – one, a company’s reluctance to give employees a voice:
Letting employees speak directly to customers requires a huge amount of trust. A loose cannon might reveal corporate secrets, give out the wrong message, or even open up the company to legal trouble.
If the fear is giving the keyboard over to the rank and file employee, why aren’t more CEOs keeping weblogs? Perhaps many companies may well be having trouble finding their web voice, which requires a greater level of transparency and authenticity than most other media…corporate communications are generally carefully crafted and packaged by PR and advertising people. For some businesses, a filtered voice is their only public “voice” to the world at large.
It is precisely this tendency to view marketing from such a narrow channel that leads to another unsettling corporate approach to weblogging. As the article in Fast Company points out, many a business foray into the blog world is a ham-fisted or blatant attempt to exploit the medium for a marketing end. Companies that view blogs as “ads” or that see the blog network as merely a channel in which they can foist or insinuate press releases will be doomed to failure.
But there should definitely be a place for serious business blogging as a public communications tool. Every business is – or should be – a topic expert on whatever it is they manufacture, deliver, sell, or service. Anyone who has an interest in the particular product, service, or industry at hand would likely find informed comment and trend monitoring of great value.
Some businesses are doing this well. Anita Campbell and David Patterson at Small Business Trends are a case in point. And even in a niche as narrow and esoteric as workers comp insurance, we are encouraged to see the nascent network of interested parties that is emerging. Hopefully, we will stay tuned for more.
Oh, and did we mention that Fast Company has a weblog too?
Tags: blogs
Posted in Business, Social media | 1 Comment »
Where are all the corporate weblogs?
Tuesday, February 24th, 2004In a recent article entitled Business Blogging, Jack Schofield of The Guardian ponders the reasons why more companies don’t have weblogs. He points to ” … a few pioneering American examples, such as Walt Disney and the state of Utah, but otherwise blogging seems to be a personal rather than a corporate stratagem.”
One potential reason that he suggests:
“Businesses and governments just don’t get it, because they don’t see the difference between the medium and the message. It’s like someone looking at a printing press and saying: ‘Well, Mr Gutenberg, that’s very interesting, but there is a finite market for Bibles.'”
I’ve wondered why blogging has been slow to catch on in the business world, too. It seems like a simple way to communicate with your constituents, internal and external. After all, if you are an expert on the service or product that you sell, and if you are presumably following industry news anyway, doesn’t it then make sense that you would want a platform for sharing that expertise with clients, vendors, and your industry at large?
Maybe it’s caution on the part of corporate lawyers. Maybe it’s not being able to think outside of the traditional advertising box. Maybe some large companies are trained to think of *solutions* as always having a big price tag. Or maybe it just takes a while for things to filter into the boardroom. Even tech companies don’t seem to be blogging in any large numbers – journalists, attorneys, physicians, consultants, and marketers seem to be in the vanguard on the business blogging front.
Be sure to check out some of the business blogging pioneers under Business Weblogs in our sidebar. The Guardian article also has links to several business blogs and resources on blogging.
Tags: blogs
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Check out our new business weblog discoveries
Sunday, January 18th, 2004We’ve added a few new corporate weblogs to our resources sidebar:
adjuster.com, featuring claims adjusting news.
BusinessPundit, a weblog focusing on corporate strategy, economics, neuroscience, and more
Tags: blogs
Posted in Business, Social media, Tools & Resources | Comments Off on Check out our new business weblog discoveries
Good business reads from the blog world
Tuesday, January 13th, 2004One of the best things about weblogs is the news filtering function they fill – they find good things for you. Here are a few items we might have missed but for our fellow bloggers.
40 government sites you can’t live without via The Small Business Blog
“Whether it’s a loan, a contract or regulatory information you seek, these sites are just what you need to get acquainted with what the government can do to help you start or grow your business.”
Why can’t we get anything done? via Circadian Shift
“Stanford B-school professor Jeffrey Pfeffer has a question: If we’re so smart, why can’t we get anything done? Here are 16 rules to help you make things happen in your organization.”
Tags: blogs
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Additions to the blogroll
Thursday, November 6th, 2003We’ve added a few new links to our “blogroll.” That’s a sidebar of weblog links, for all of you weblog rookies ;-)
Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer is the latest addition. It’s maintained by Michael W. Fox, a Texas attorney who specializes in labor and employment law. He offers some interesting news and pointers to regional and national issues. in the workplace and in employment law.
For the labor point of view, check out Confined Spaces by long-time labor leader Jordan Barab. Not surprisingly, his blog has a heavy focus on health & safety issues – he’s a veteran safety consultant and served as a special assistant at OSHA.
Know of any other weblogs about workers compensation-related issues out there that we should add to our list? Weblogs have taken much of the on-line community by storm, and there’s a growing roster of good health-care and legal blogs out there now…but there aren’t too many insurance blogs yet!
Tags: blogs
Posted in Misc., Social media | Comments Off on Additions to the blogroll
