3 posts tagged “blogs”

Last week I spoke at the Freelancers' Forum Breakfast Seminar of Boston Women Communicators (BWC). The title of my presentation was: What the Heck Is Social Media and Why Should I Care? The audience was comprised of independent practitioners, agency experts and in-house communicators, primarily of non-profit organizations - all hungry for information on how to use social media for their business. 

One piece of advice I left for the freelancers was to publish a blog instead of trying to get a comprehensive website off the ground. It's easier and cheaper and takes less time. Of course, once the trial phase is over (and there should always be a trial phase!), a blog needs to be maintained and cared for just like a website. However, many BWC freelancers are gifted writers which makes a blog a perfect tool. In my list of links, however, I forgot to include Todd Defren's Beware of the Blabosphere post which includes The 7 Simple Rules of Freelance Blogging. I'd add a point: Blog about your expertise - not your clients.

In case you are a woman, work in communications and live in and around Boston, and this is the first time you read about Boston Women Communicators, read on. BWC was founded in 1994 by Jane Breschard Wilson to provide a forum for women to develop relationships that would help them in business and beyond. It's the "beyond" that strikes me with this organization which I just joined. It's a professional support network for women that embraces young and experienced communicators and brings together corporate communicators, agency folks and sole practitioners as well as entrepreneurs and internal communicators. In addition, it supports women in need with their events. It doesn't have a website (yet) but if you google the name or the founder, you'll find the address for inquiries.  

As an addendum to yesterday's post, here are a couple of excellent posts about external and internal blogs and what to watch out for. The first one is from Marianne Richmond interviewing blogher panelist Megan Belcher on the blogher blog. Blogher is a blogging community for women offering lots of great resources for female bloggers.

Marianne Richmond will moderate the panel "How to Keep Out of Trouble" on day 2 of the Blogher Business Conference 07 to be held in the Big Apple on March 22nd and 23rd. In the interview Megan talks about the legal challenges of blogs and how to weigh the potential risks of blogging against the benefits.

The second terrific blog post is by Katie Paine one of the top communications and marketing measurement luminaries in the country and the founder of the Delahaye Group. In her PR Research 2.0 post Katie describes the growing-up of internal blogs. She cites recent research that shows "significant increase (21%)  in the percentage of internal bloggers saying positive things about their organization as well as a decline in the % of employees saying negative things".
This should help organizations who still worry about internal bad-mouthing.

The Yankee Chapter of IABC offers lots of great programs for people to interact and network. One of the traditional get-togethers is the MetroWest Luncheon series which is organized by Susan Ethier. Usually a small group of corporate and independent practitioners meet for lunch and a lively discussion in a Natick restaurant.

Last week's topic was called "blogging" and sure enough we needed to add on another table. Anything related to social media draws a crowd these days.

Three of the attendees - including me - have a blog. One runs an internal blog for her company and the other blogger had just recently relocated to this area and hosts his neighborhood blog on the Worcester Telegram & Gazette platform.

The reservations about starting a blog - be it for a corporation or by a communications consultant to promote his or her expertise - were loud and clear: "I've got no time!"; "Who would read our/my blog anyway?"; "It takes a lot of time and resources to maintain a blog." Of course - all of these are legitimate considerations. This is why setting up a blog - especially an external corporate blog - requires preparation. One attendee wondered whether there's a Blogs"R"Us where you can get everything you need to start a blog. It sounds like a great idea but the major blog platforms and their (and other) tools are about all we get in terms of help. Everything else corporations or independent practitioners need to figure out for themselves.

A blog is a brand-building tool that can greatly enhance your reputation. It's not the right tool to promote a product as one attendee suggested.  Use it to show your company's expertise and blog about topics that are relevant to your business. A blog also presents another valuable vehicle when you need to communicate. Overall the recent JetBlue crisis was handled well but the company failed to its blog to apologize, explain and move forward.

While the blogosphere is almost saturated, there's still room for corporate blogs as many Fortune 1000 companies have been slow in warming up to blogs. Many of course have severe regulatory and legal issues to deal with. There's also still room for certain expert blogs as some areas are not represented very well in the blogosphere.

Blogs are almost mainstream. However, as the IABC MetroWest Luncheon shows, there are still a lot of questions and misconceptions - and room for education.