After our post the other day about blogging with Office 2007 and Movable Type Enterprise, we got some great conversations started about what it takes to help businesses start blogs in general.

One of the most exciting was Isabel Wang’s column at Web Host Industry Review, entitled “Six Apart: We Won’t Be Happy Until Every Company Can Have a Blog” It’s true! And Isabel’s one of the smartest thinkers in the web hosting business, so she offers some really useful insights for web hosts. Smart thinking always begets intelligent conversation, as evidenced by the first comment, in which John McKown outlines the challenge nicely:

1. Most people that aren’t techies don’t see the value in blogging yet. They see it is as a fad and a bit of a waste of their time.
2. Many businesses still see blogs as a potential liability.
3. Many laypeople that I meet think that a blog is too large of a commitment for their time to keep a blog up.
4. Many people hear FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) spread by the mass media about blogs, and they assume that bloggers are people with too much time on their hands.

And those are exactly the same concerns and fears that we hear while explaining blogs to companies. Combine that with some current bloggers’ unwillingness to embrace new kinds of blogging (“Blogging from Office? That’s lame!”) and we’ve all got our work cut out for us.

I talk a little bit about that work over on the E-consultancy site. In the interview, I was asked a bit about ” Why should a small business consider devoting precious resources to a blog, rather than other web marketing tools…?” and was pretty pleased with how the answer turned out:

The best reason for a small business to create and maintain a blog is because it’s the most cost-effective method of maintaining a relationship with important audiences like customers, potential customers, partners, or employees. A blog doesn’t need to be run in place of other tools - it can easily complement them. For example, many companies post the content from their email newsletters on their blogs, making the most of the content while also allowing for a level of interactivity and discoverability that email alone doesn’t provide.

We’re excited that such a great conversation has started around what it’s going to take to get every business blogging. What we’re clear about so far is that we need to tell more stories of success, and spend less time hyping scare stories or worrying about whether people are blogging the “right” way. Let’s get ‘em all started, and then help improve those business blogs once they’re up and running.

The New York Times has a couple of fun articles on weblogs this weekend, chock full of good information on the social implications of weblogs and featuring a number of great sites that are powered by Movable Type.

"Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It" features MT users like Heather Armstrong and Jonathan Van Gieson talking about the trials and tribulations of living life in public via a website, along with some cogent quotes by David Weinberger and Nick Denton. And "A New York State of Blog" focuses on a subject that's near and dear to my heart, blogging culture in New York City. Jonathan and Nick are featured again, along with Gawker's Liz Spiers, a link to Gothamist, run by Jen Chung and Jake Dobkin, and a nice mention of Lockhart Steele.

It's good to see all of these sites get this much-deserved attention, and it just makes sense that Movable Type sites would get featured in a section called "Fashion & Style".

Those of you who checked out the Screen Savers today got a good look at how easy it is to change style sheets on your Movable Type weblog right within the interface. While Sarah had some good ideas on how to do this, we don't recommend just taking someone else's stylesheets. Feel free to learn from them, but make sure you modify them or create your own.

Not only will the original creator appreciate not having their design borrowed (designs are copyrighted by default), you'll benefit my making sure your design is as distinctive as your writing. And in the meantime, we're working on making it even easier to design and share your stylesheets in Movable Type.

We're pleased to announce that Movable Type has been nominated under the Best Practices category in the 2003 Webby Awards.

November's issue of MIT's Technology Review contains an article about backlinking -- as well as a mention of TrackBack and some quotes by us. The article is currently premium content, but the author, David F. Gallagher has informed me that it will most probably be available for free some time in the next week.

Want to contribute to Essential Blogging, the O'Reilly book that Ben and I co-authored along with Cory Doctorow, Rael Dornfest, Shelly Powers and Scott Johnson?

Rael has issued a call for submissions from webloggers who have pearls of wisdom and anecdotes to share with the weblogging community.

Not up to writing? Well, Essential Blogging is holding a public review where you, the readers, can constructively comment on the book's content. Read more about the public review on the O'Reilly weblog of our editor, Nat Torkington.

Version 2.0 is scheduled to be released in early March. You can download version 1.4 currently, but if you're making plans to switch, we suggest you wait until 2.0 is out before importing your current blog.

Don't worry, two to three weeks go by fairly quickly. Believe me, we know.

Ben and I will be appearing on TechTV's The Screen Savers today.

We'll be talking about MT and probably showing screens from version 2.0. If you're currently using Movable Type and think "that doesn't look like MT!" it's because 2.0 does look a good deal different from 1.4 and below.

A sample screenshot.

(More screenshots to come)

And, if you've stumbled on Movable Type from The Screen Savers, welcome!

I had the pleasure of speaking about Movable Type with onLine Tonight's David Lawrence on Friday.

You can listen the archived hour-long interview via this continuous stream or you can download the January 4th show via their website.

While listening, please keep in mind that there is a reason why we prefer email as our method of communication.

Forming a complete sentence on live radio is quite the challenge.

For those who can't decide whether to make the move to Movable Type, we'd like to offer a page of testimonials from satisfied users.

Are you a satisfied user?

If so, send us your testimonial in an email. Don't forget to include your URL so we can link back to the source of contentment.