Molly Holzschlag and Darren Barefoot at the Blog Business Summit
- Edit your materials before you post, but don't let your own editing censor your voice
- Blogs lend themselves to quick writing and shorter posts
- Resisting the temptation to push "Publish" too soon can be helpful
- Corrections are best handled with strikethrough text on the error. "Update:" at the end of the post works well too
- Editing too many times can irritate people because subscribers to your web feed see it as a new post each time you update
- Don't name people on your blog unless they are already in the public space
- Don't excerpt email discussions unless you have the person's approval
- Understand the blogging environment by reading for a while before you write
- Companies don't blog - people blog. Passionate ones make the best bloggers.
- Blogging is about telling a story, and extending that story into a conversation
- Having a voice and a personality is critical. Boring or bored people aren't engaging.
- The last people in the organization you want to run the blog is the PR or marketing department. They have been trained to think and speak in a certain way that doesn't work in a blogging environment.
- PR and marketing people can be great bloggers if the get on the Cluetrain
- The amount of time spent blogging is dependent on how fast of a writer you are and the size of the posts
- Controversial posts bring traffic, inbound links
- If you're not a controversial person or in such an environment, this may not be the right approach for you
- Blogging is an act of courage, because you are putting things out in the public that never were before
- Blogs are changing the corporate culture of Microsoft, Adobe
- Define the audience, offer public feedback mechanisms and listen to them
- If you don't give customers a place to talk about your products, they will make their own
- Discuss your competition frankly and honestly. You become a source for information on them.
- Cite other blogs, you can't do this enough
- Bottom line: be transparent, be authentic, tell your story