Just seen that PC Pro has launched a blog. Good example of a “traditional” media outlet getting it right. The posts are short, to the point, and entertaining. I can’t say I’ve ever been a huge reader of the mag (I’m not really their target audience) but once I started scanning through the blog there were loads of posts which grabbed my attention.
When i lived in Italy I visited the Benedictine monastery in Subiaco. It’s built around a cave where St Benedict supposedly lived in solitude for three years fed by a shepherd or monk (I’ve heard both versions) who lowered a basket of food down at intervals. The cave is surprisingly peacefully and, depending on your temperament, kind of appealing.
My positive response to the environment demonstrated that people feel different degrees of being intro- or extroverted and it’s something that crops up in questions when I run social media training sessions: who are ‘these people’ ie bloggers, tweeters, social networkers et al and why do *they* feel so comfortable broadcasting their lives?
I’m not sure I know the answer. At a basic level, once you and your friends start using something like Facebook it becomes more standardised and natural, you find yourself adding more personal updates, posting photos etc.
But honestly I still feel a bit like a social media “observer” using tools like this blog and Twitter to engage with my community from professional more than personal desires. As a pretty private person being publicly online makes me feel exposed and I contemplate deleting my accounts to run away to my Benedict’s cave. (Although I wonder if after 30 mins there I’d discover a compulsion to tweet “sitting in cave waiting for @Romanus to stop by with the food basket”).
I freely admit I am not a “blogger’s blogger”, a quick scan through this blog reveals meandering conversations, typos, and grammatical oddities which would prevent me claming to be an expert on writing blogs.
But, I do chat to blogging newbies asking what they should write about when they start out so I wanted to direct you to Chris Garrett’s excellent post on Engaging Readers, complete with handy diagram (I love visual representations like this).
Chris is a blogger and internet marketing consultant and, if you’re a brand looking for someone to create content for you, he’s a blogger for hire. (I’d love to get his take on Ghost Blogging and find out how he works it)
I added my 2 cents to this article by Brendan Cooper the other week. It’s been interesting watching the discussion develop and it’s worth checking out to see the range of arguments for and against.
Simon Collister wrote a good response post which is closer to what i think. He also raises a great point that it’s probably a matter of personal perspective as well.
What’s your perspective?
I read a lot of other PR peeps’ blogs. I learn loads from seeing what my peers in PR/Social Media are up to and also because they write about some great stuff (how they have the time to find it all and then write it up I have no idea)
Just catching up on my feeds I thought I’d do a round up of things that caught my eye:
New Media Curious- Ben’s moved his blog to http://benayers.co.uk/. It looks great and I have a little blog envy
PR Blogger - Stephen’s advertising, for a friend, a job opp at Cake as a Digital Account Executive (I guess they’re looking for Stephen 2.0)
Under Strict Embargo- Daljit gets me up to speed on all the Phorm stuff I’ve been hearing about
Simon Collister- shares his CIPR diploma research project on the ability of political bloggers in the UK to affect the MSM agenda of broadsheet newspapers
Bredan Cooper - keywords are the basis to social media monitoring, here’s a good intro into what they are and how to pick ‘em
Drew B - posts a good video explaining Twitter. After watching it to double-check I really *do* understand Twitter, I finally have to say I’m not loving it. I held off on this declaration until now as I suspect it shows me up to have a boring life. You can judge for yourself if you want: Me fumbling around on Twitter with a pitiful 14 updates
A PR guy’s musings - Stuart’s news about the new Downing Streeet Twitter feed gave me hope I might not be the boringest person on Twitter. But it’s actually quite good, almost like a direct press wire from the government. No doubt a lot of people will hate it
Right, just noticed - where are all the female UK PR bloggers on my reader? (OK Shiny Redgals I know about you but I meant individual blogs). With such a high percentage of women working in PR I know it can’t just be the blokes who have gone out and started blogs. Who am I missing as part of my reading list?
On Tuesday night I attended my 2nd London Bloggers Meetup which I can’t talk about without first mentioning the event’s sponsor - Qype. Qype are currently adopting what I like to think will be known as the Stormhoek approach to marketing; bloggers + free booze = reviews. And why not, PRs have been expensing journalists for years. It seems to be working for them Qype is currently getting a lot of word-of-mouth buzz.
Lots of PRs are always wondering “how to meet bloggers” and this would be a good place to start. They should be rushing down their with their company credit cards to pick up the shortfall when the sponsor’s tab runs out and also looking at which clients they can get to sponsor the event.
The event was a good mix of people with a brief but interesting talk from a solicitor [I stupidly didn't note down names so hopefully Andy Bargery will fill in the details] to illuminate bloggers on some of the legal aspects of blogging. He had a really good understanding of the issues specific to the social media space. My main outtake was that the law still needs to catch up with the technology though.
All in all a good night and I have finally experienced the Coach and Horses which seems to be the meet-up venue of the moment.
Outsourcing is a big trend at the moment. I think it’s partly being driven by the current web business boom. Elance.com is a useful site catering to the need for freelancers and potential projects to link find eachother.
They also publish some useful content on there. I spotted this post “Thirteen ways to make your blog go viral”. Mostly just best practice for running a blog but a useful summary for someone new to blogging looking for ways to drive traffic.
I think one of the best bits of advice is around creating resources like “how to” articles or Top 100 lists, much like they’ve done here!
I’m a bit late to the party with this but a friend told me about “Max-gate” and The Guardian travel blog and asked me what I thought so i did some reading up.
I think, from my tone, you get where I sit on this. Sometimes the viciousness of online allowing everyone to have their say, particularly when it’s anonymous, really annoys me; this goes double when it’s a target like this. The guy wrote *one* post and people were all over him
“Should we start a blog”? is the first question I’m often asked when consulting with companies on new media. So here’s the short answer – no, don’t feel you *should*.
More importantly you can’t blog in isolation. What I mean by that is a blog is not a soapbox for your CEO to regurgitate corporate messaging. Social media is, well, social. Web 2.0 allows people to interact and engage in two-way, three-way, 100-way + conversations about topics they’re mutually interested in.
There’s many good reasons to start a company blog, almost as many as why you shouldn’t start one. Sometimes something as simple as a webcam can have a far greater reach than trying to talk about the company’s annual results - see Ceddarvision.tv
Before writing you need to listen first.
