Session 6: Kem Meyer “Blogging”
- Not everyone can be a blog writer, but everyone can be a blog reader.
Why Blog?
- Blogs are social.
- Great for networking.
- RSS feeds and subscriptions.
- Way to share personal stories quickly.
- Connectedness.
- Expressiveness.
- Share hobbies/interests.
- Training and tutorials.
Writing Blogs
- Write it once and point people to it instead of repeating yourself.
- Stewardship and accountability as a leader simply by sharing your content.
- Forces you to organize your thoughts. (more disciplined and strategic)
- Puts a face or personality to who you are.
- Blogs are better if they’re shorter
The “What’s” of blogging.
- Blogosphere- The universe of blogging.
- Blovel – Very loooong blog.
- Blogworthy – Something worth blogging about
- Blahg – Not blogworthy
- Dooce – Fired because of a blogpost. – Watch what you post.
- Lurker – Reading a blog, but not participating on it.
- Post – Blog entry
- Doppelblogger – Stealing a post and claiming it as your own. Reusing content is great, just give credit to the writer.
- Trackback – Let another blog know that you are linking to one of its entries.
- Ping – Alerting blogtracking software that you’ve made a post.
- Blogroll – List of blogs you personally track.
- Moblogging – Blogging from your mobile phone.
- Link Love – A link to your blog from another blogger.
- Troll – Someone who leaves comments on a blog solely to antagonize the author.
- Flamer – Someone who is inappropriate in their responses.
- Blogna Sandwich – Someone who spends their lunch reading blogs.
Tools
- Blog readers. (bloglines, google reader etc…)
- Free tools: blogger, typepad, wordpress
- Most have paid upgrades with added features.
Best Practices
- Be yourself, be authentic.
- Provide value
- Know your audience
- A Blog should be personal…just remember it isn’t private.
- Use common sense and respect.
- Don’t apologize for light blogging. Blog when you can.
- Comment on blogs, but don’t feel like you have to comment on everything.
- Sharing link love
- Don’t ask for others to link to you…it will come naturally.
- No quick-links…let people know where your linking them to.
- Test your links.
- Link to something that will most likely be around long term.
Filed under: conferences
