The first time I wrote about business blogs a couple of weeks back, I was excited by the concept and on a voyage of discovery of blogs. After some very nice responses, I figured that I would try again, to see if I enjoyed it enough to make it a regular practice. So I visited a bunch of business blogs, and read lots of posts.

In all honesty, it reminded me of halloween.

Not the costumes, or the door ringing, or the scary stories, and the jack o’lanterns, and candles and tricks. OK, maybe it’s nothing like halloween. Except for the part at the end, where you come home from running door-to-door, ringing on peoples’ bells, and shouting “trick or treat,” at the top of your lungs. The part where you take off your goofy looking mask, and empty your pillow sack on the kitchen table, and just wonder how so much candy and goodies can even exist in the world.

And it’s almost impossible to choose or pick which one to eat first.

Well, my door-to-door visits to a bunch of business blogs were filled with goodies. I didn’t leave any comments on any blogs. I suspect that at some point I’m going to have to start writing some thanks to the people who are writing these blogs just because they want to.

It’s difficult figuring out which one to write about first, so I’ll just dive in.

Almost first thing this morning, I suggested to a friend who asked for some marketing ideas the following:

Build the karma equity of your company by getting involved in good works, and being seen as a corporation with a conscience and a heart. Think about that.

I’m not sure exactly how I meant to do that. I hadn’t had my first cup of coffee for the morning, but they seemed like the right words. That will teach me to respond to emails while I’m still asleep. I think I now have a clue on what I was emailing about after reading Ageless Marketing’s post on The Moral Shift in Marketing: From Hucksterism to Healing. It makes such good sense that I sincerely hope that’s what I intended. If it wasn’t, it is now.

If it’s not encouraging to learn that Mark Cuban started up on a five hundred dollar advance from his first customer, then I don’t know what is. See: Rules of Success. #1: Sweat Equity is the best equity!

Keep in mind, as you’re working harder, and you’re working smarter, that it’s your customer that you need to please. Give them something of value, and make them feel important. It’s a simple lesson and it’s what you learn in Micro-Business 101 - basic facts of life and business

The strangest sneakers I’ve ever seen are highlighted at a post titled Spring-loaded evangelism. If you want to get excited by a product, and by testimonials for a product, follow the link back to the sneaker-maker’s site, and prepare to read some of the most glowing statements about a product that I’ve ever seen.

There are five questions at the end of Decent Marketing’s post on To Fee, Or Not To Fee that I thought were worth answering by any company that’s been around at least five years.

If you are involved in a corporation, how does it interact with the community around it? I ‘ve seen first hand how a giant like Dupont can have a positive impact in Delaware. The past five or six years, Maryland National Bank has taken the torch away from the chemical company, and found ways to become a local leader and a good neighbor to the community. How does your business interact? Can someone run The Idealistic Corporation?

I’ve found more reading than I can handle with Brand Autopsy’s White Paper Weekend Reading. If you like marketing, I definitely recommend going directly to one of the first listed, How Cults Seduce: and What Marketing Can Learn From Them (PDF).

Wayne Hurlbert’s posts are often the types of things you can incorporate into business practices for your office or your web site. Useful, practical, and well described. I had some difficulty choosing only one article, and ended up picking this one: Turn your blog into a hub site. Great stuff.

I’m going to cheat a little, and throw in an article that is from a site I’m not sure I can call a blog. But I’ve been reading the monthly postings at UIWeb for at least a year regularly now, and have gotten something positive out of them each time I have, even if it’s on a topic like How to survive creative burnout. These are some really good ideas. I’m going to make this a two-for-one paragraph, and link to a thematic cousin of the UIWeb post, since Wayne put me in a Hub Building state of mind. The first snuck in a “well” related metaphor to relate to creativity, and self proclaimed “Passion Catalyst” Curt Rosengren also dispenses some great suggestions on how non-productive time can be something you should value highly: Take time to fill the well

All I really know is that I want to visit the McDonalds envisioned by Seth Godin in Brand Journalism?.

I’m a big fan of little glimpses of undocumented corporate histories, interviews and story telling, and SearchBlog gives us all of that in A Talk With Tim Koogle, where some thoughts on Yahoo and Google are shared.

Joint replacement technology. Sounds like the type of thing that would not only be ripe for compelling and captivating TV ads, but also a very engaging web site. Or is that an Outer Limits or Twilight Zone episode? Am I ending my Halloween themed post with a bit of a trick? I wouldn’t believe me if I was reading this, but I might be asking the same question that Michele Miller asked after watching one of those ads and visiting their web site: Who’s in Charge of Marketing…

I didn’t intend this to be a pseudo-halloween edition of blogging about business, but now I have some early summer practice for when the real thing rolls around in October.

If you know of some other business blog posts that we should look at, empty your pillow case on the table top, and show us what you’ve got. Thanks!