We have just created an India Business Feed on FeedBurner Network in order to aggregate the best business blogs in India and post their updates in a single feed. Blogs chosen are selected basis the influential capability of the individual blogger, quality and frequency of posts, page rank of the blog, number of subscribers, and page views. Over time, we expect to feature more business bloggers on the network.

The objective is to a) provide the readers the best of business bloggers in India in one master feed, and b) help encourage and support business blogging in India. Readers can subscribe to the feed or subscribe to the latest updates on email (check the Daily Network Digest on sidebar of the Network page). On this note, we would appreciate if the member bloggers can use the network badge or BuzzBoost to help highlight posts of fellow bloggers on their blogs.

Membership is through invitation only, though you can email editor@indiaprblog.com with your blog details for consideration.

What is a FeedBurner Network?, Subscribe to India Business Feed,

These days a number of media publications in India have mentioned in their stories that corporates are shying away from blogging because of negative comments, besides others. Let me try to give my point of view why the fear is unfounded.

Before that, let’s revisit a bit on why should a corporate blog? There have been numerous postings on this and I don’t want to repeat much. But primarily, it’s because that a blog can be an effective medium to engage with an organisation’s stakeholders, which in turn provide priceless insights on what their opinions are on that particular organisations and what their expectations are. A blog can also be a good medium to increase brand visibility and attract business leads.

Many global companies have benefitted from blogging. We can take the example of Microsoft and how Robert Scoble has helped give a human face to the software giant. According to one blog post whose url I have lost, ‘General Motor’s FastLane blog delivered an estimated USD 410,470 worth of customer insight and marketing at an approximate cost of USD 255,675. This is a return on investment of 67% according to Forrester Research’. Sun encourages its employees to blog and to use their blogs as a collaboration platform with outside developers. Dell has been using its blog for customer support. We also have Boeing whose blog written by its CEO is very popular.

In India, while some start up companies have adopted blogging, many of established companies that are consider to be the face of India Inc., excepting a few, haven’t. Those that have adopted blogging include companies like Infosys, TCS, Rediff, Milagrow, HCL, Cleartrip, Gridstone, Frito-Lay, and Naukri.

So now coming back to our point of discussion, let’s remember that for any corporation, receiving a negative feedback from customers or business partners is not a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to the blogosphere. How many times have we written letters to the editors of newspapers giving our client’s point of view on a particular negative reportage. How many times have we engaged with customers who have lodged complaints at consumer forums and at courts for unsatisfactory services meted out to them? But do we stop engaging with the media or the customers for fear of getting negative feedback? We don’t.

Even if we get a negative comment, there is no need to panic and pack up the blogging tools. We need to ask ourselves what is the basis of that comment? If it has a valid reason and what it says is factually true, then there must be a valid answer to that also. If we have wronged, we should be willing to say sorry. Besides, negative comments are not always bad.

Now if a negative comment is a personal attack or without any substantial base, then it can be moderated. There can be a comment policy on the blog.

Let’s ask ourselves now where these personal unfounded negative comments will come from. Not likely from the responsible bloggers. Let’s admit that many bloggers do practice self-censorship. I am a blogger but it doesn’t mean I can write anything and everything that’s not true. My and my blog’s reputation is at stake. Therefore let’s remember that any responsible blogger wouldn’t come out and try to engage in a dirty fight without any valid reason.

Foul comments will most likely come from trolls who get a kick from lambasting any organisation or person. But even when there is troll attack, simply ignoring those particular comments would send out a message. Others reading it will also understand that.

However, if your product is bad, whether you are blogging or not, the negative commentary will come from other blogs. If you have a blog already and you are engaging in a dialogue with many people in the blogosphere, it becomes much easier to reply back and give your point of view.

What do you say? Shall we engage?

Picture credit: Challenge of corporate blogging at ConversationsMatter (I couldn’t help using this)

Business blogging in India is evolving, but yet far behind the tech and bloggers of other subjects. So when Gaurav came up with the idea of running a collaborated weekly digest of the best of business blog posts, it sounded good.

So here we are, India PR Blog is part of this initiative, doing its bit to help promote business blogging in India. The initiative is simple. Here is the brief explanation:

We will form a network of 5 to 10 influential business bloggers — Veerchand Bothra, Rajesh Lalwani, Ranjan Varma, Kiruba, Gaurav Mishra, Gautam Ghosh, and your own India PR Blog to begin with — who will publish a weekly roundup of Indian business blogs on their respective blogs.

The roundup will consist of about 5 high-quality posts written by (new and established) Indian business bloggers. We’ll typically share the link with a small excerpt and our own comment on the post. The posts to be linked to will be decided among the network.

The posts can include all business topics including marketing, advertising, public relations, human resource management, finance, and entrepreneurship.

So there it is. Simple. And so here are this week’s roundup:

1) Kamla Bhatt interviews ItwoFS’s Karthik Srinivasan on plagiarism in Indian film music

Ever wanted to know the status of plagiarism in Indian film music. itwofs.com is a chronicle of plagiarism in Indian film music. Read about the initiative from Karthik Srinivasan from this interview by Kamla. Soon we might hear about Karthik being sued by Bollywwod music composers, or the latter being sued by the original copyright holders thanks to this site.

2) Maninder on what’s wrong with Idea Rocks India’s MSN microsite

A good insight and a piece of advice to all those companies jumping into the online gold rush today. I actually have more to say that what Maninder had to say. Create a (micro) site, add some flash designs (but that takes 5 minutes to load …yawn), throw in some games and contests, tie up with a few restaurants and movie halls, and pray that everyone from your target customer group will log in. It takes a lot more than that to create the next Orkut or YouTube, or a closer Gang of Girls. There is no originality in the online campaigns going on today. Maybe we need another itwofs for such campaigns.

3) A three part series on startup financing in India: 1, 2, 3

A good writeup by Kartik Must read for all entrepreneurs. And something I will refer to when I am ready for my startup

4) Guest Post by Mayank Bidawatka, Head of Marketing at RedBus.in. on Pluggd In this post, Mayank demystifies SEO and SEM concepts

If you are eager to know about search engine optimisation and search engine marketing, read this post. While it won’t make you know how to search engine optimised your site, at least you will the basics.

5) Sudipto Majumdar on the rise of gaming cafes in India and Sashi Reddi on the Indian gaming business

Gaming is fast taking on the Indian landscape. I had a colleague who told me that in her previous office, most of the executives will go to gaming sites between breaks. Gaming breaks instead of cigarette breaks huh. These are some good reads on the emerging vertical.