BBC News has a great article on the potential social networks present to busniesses worldwide (”Firms ‘miss’ social site success“):

Researchers for Gartner found that huge opportunities for improving the management of large firms exist.

“Businesses which harness how employees use these sites stand to increase savings, productivity and profits,” said Gartner researcher Jeffrey Mann.

He told the BBC the challenge was how to apply this to the corporate world.

The Gartner survey discovered that social networking sites, instant messaging email, chat and file sharing are attracting significant levels of interest online. (More at news.bbc.co.uk)

Is your business tapping into the social network trend? Heck, does your business even really understand what a social network is? BlogIndiana Conference 2008 can help you learn the ins and outs of web-based communities, from building your own to effective social network marketing practices. Reserve your seat today.

This is a question most bloggers wonder–especially when they are first getting started. While there are plenty of ideas on exactly how often you should blog, we wanted to know how often you actually are blogging.

As we close in on 100 bloggers having completed the 2008 Indiana Blogger Census, I thought it would be a good time to share a little bit of the data we’re collecting. As you can see from the pie chart, Hoosier bloggers are blogging much more than I had anticipated.

With 35% claiming to blog every day, that’s a lot of fresh content. And perhaps even more impressive–more than half of Indiana bloggers are posting new content on at least a weekly basis. We could probably put together some kind of statistic at the end of the census proclaiming that every XX seconds, a blog in Indiana is updated.

If you are interested in learning more about the results of the census, we’ll be releasing a more comprehensive report at the Blog Indiana conference.

We’d also like to thank FormSpring for creating such an amazingly easy to use web form builder that powers our census.

During the early planning phases of the conference, a unique idea was put forth on a way to have a little fun with all the networking that was bound to happen over the course of two days.

The concept is that each attendee selects 2 or 3 tags (or keywords) that identify a specific area of knowledge or expertise that they have. Then, throughout the conference, everyone wears their “PeopleTags” so others can clearly see where their specialties lie.

The purpose being to promote spontaneous conversation between two or more people with questions about specific aspects of blogging, social media, marketing, writing, SEO–anything!

We call this PeopleTagging!

As the conference gets closer, we’ll be sending out a brief survey to all registered attendees asking them to select a few tags that represent their areas of knowledge. We’ll be creating baskets of buttons representing the various tags that are the most popular among the group. As everyone checks-in on the first day, you’ll get to select your buttons and wear them.

We’d like to think of this concept as a constant networking opportunity with everyone you see at the conference. Plus, the buttons will make for a nice token from the conference.

Oh, and please ignore the tie in the photo above–ties are definitely not required at Blog Indiana!

Congratulations to Compendium Blogware (one of Blog Indiana’s first sponsors) for landing an additional $1.6 million in a third round of private funding. Compendium Blogware is Indiana’s only blog software company and has quickly been growing since starting in 2007.

As the company grows, they will be looking to expand their staff. Check out their employment opportunities if you are interested in working for a very forward-thinking Indiana company.

Thanks for sitting tight–I know it’s been a while since we updated. To put it simply, we’ve been busy making this conference awesome. As I’m sure many of you have been waiting, please sink your teeth into…

Updated Conference Session Details
Much more detail about the sessions are now available. You’ll notice we have slid everything into 3 categories (or tracks) of topics: basics, business, and general. The best part about these tracks is we are providing sessions for EVERYBODY and every level–from those who are new to blogging, to seasoned bloggers, as well as a strong track for business bloggers. Also, you are allowed to jump around on the tracks–you don’t have to stay in “Basics” all day if you don’t want. Inversely, a seasoned blogger may want to pick up a business or a basics session if it interests them. We’re flexible like that!

Check out the new session info and once you’ve stopped drooling–REGISTER! Space is limited and won’t last forever.

2008 Indiana Blogger Census
One of the major goals of Blog Indiana is to help build and promote the local community of bloggers in Indiana. To that end, we’ve decided to hold an annual Blogger Census to help get a handle on just what makes up our blogging community. Please, when you have 3 minutes, fill out the very short 2008 Indiana Blogger Census. You can pick what you want to keep private. We’ll be using the data collected to generate a fun report on the state of blogging in Indiana (we won’t use personally identifiable information).

Also, in order for the census to be meaningful for everyone, we need your help spreading the word. Please tell other bloggers about the census. We’ll be releasing some nifty “I took the census” badges for your blogs very soon (if blog bling is your thing).

Next Week… We’ll start posting speaker bios.