Case: Company President's Personal Weblog Sees Unexpected Success

MarketingSherpa.com: Software Company President Blog Proves a Publicity & Search Optimization Bonanza(content is free until June 26, 2004)

After some prodding from the "PR guy", the president of CoreStreet, Phil Libin, created a personal weblog called VastlyImportant.com.

Libin's story isn't necessarily new these days, but the article relates some of the unexpected ways his weblog has been a successful tool for him and his company:

As he was discussing ideas in his blog with a reporter one afternoon this spring, Libin was inspired to invent a new free downloadable program to help consumers safeguard against phishing attacks...

Libin launched the program, named SpoofStick, as a hotlink in the blog only. He figured he'd get a few downloads. So far he's gotten more than 35,000 and a heap of press attention from dozens of media outlets, including USAToday and WashingtonPost.com.

I also thought it was interesting to see how his weblog contributed to being "googled" before meetings:

Libin explains, "I very often find myself going into a meeting where obviously a person intentionally Googled me five minutes before on the chance they'd find something. It's maybe 25% of the new people I meet."

Wow, 25% of the new people he meets Google him before meetings? I wonder if there is a growing demand for execs that want to able to be Googled, but don't know how? Perhaps they too should start a weblog.

Thanks to Tim Slavin for the link.