Me? I prefer to ShadowBox

There's a blogger located across the pond with a good head on his shoulders and excellent advice on business blogging.

Patrick Dodd, the author behind Corporate Blogging 101 , is in his own words, a well-traveled entrepreneur living in merry old England.

His site is pretty much a mirror of the marketing group on my RSS feed, and he's a welcome addition to the roles. He offers white papers on blogging (obviously a great way to market a new product), and he offers advice on how to business blog.

One post that hit home was his post on the acceptance of blogs by corporate executives.

This is frightening. The blogosphere is the place where conversations are taking place. Its the place where your customers are talking about you. Its the place where your competitors are talking about you. Joining in these conversations should be priority #1 for businesses - and you dont need a blog to do that.

• A minority (15%) say that someone in their organization is currently writing a blog related to the company or its activities.
• Only one in five (21%) report reading business-related blogs once a week or more frequently.
• Only 30% of senior executives report that they have a thorough understanding of the term “Internet blog.”
• Forty percent believe that their companies should have corporate policies to address the writing of blogs unrelated to the company or its activities. This compares with the 77% who believe their companies should have such policies concerning the authoring of blogs sanctioned by the company.

Absolutely! Before you unleash your corporate blog(s) you must have blogging policies in place.

The study, run by Harris Interactive, shows a giant gaping chasm between how business bloggers like Patrick (and Franki and I) see blogging and how the corporate world sees blogging.

To them, the negative press, the wild nature of the medium, and the lingering bias that bloggers are angry men in pajamas firing off letters to the editor of the New York Times is slowing the adoption rate of blogs.

At this point, the pain of learning about blogs is greater than pain of ignoring them. The problem for these executives is online communities reward early adopters. Thus, a great opportunity both to educate and to profit from the current lack of acceptance.

Patrick continues with a call to action. What are you doing with your blog to bring in business?