“I Blog, Therefore I Am” — An Introduction to Blogging

Part three in a workshop series sponsored by UW Department of Communications, the Seattle Chapter of the Association for Women in Communications and the UW Alumni Association. From the promo:

Blogging is one of the hottest buzzwords in communication today, whether we’re talking about journalism, public relations, politics or marketing. Learn what makes blogs different from other Web site forms, analyze a variety of blogging technologies and hosts, and explore how local businesses and media companies are incorporating blogs into their communication mix.

Notes, Links, Etc for Saturday
(aka “practice what you preach”)

Agenda:

• 9.00 — Welcome, Introductions
• 9.15 — What is a blog? what’s web 2.0? why do we care? who’s using these technologies?
  • Key characteristics
  • Just a technology! (genre problem)
  • Tagging & folksonomies
  • Tag clouds
  • Blogrolls
  • RSS
  • “Viral”
• 10.00 — Guest Speaker, Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion, one of the premier PR blogs. Steve, who is senior vice president in Edelman’s me2revolution practice, comes to us from New York via iChat.
  • Policies (@ Del.icio.us )
• Break
• How new media (blogs, etc) are changing news & entertainment (and, thus, all organizational communication). Part 3 of News War from PBS Frontline. Watch “The New Universe of Online Media” and “The Revolution’s New Synergies”
• How businesses (local and otherwise) are using blogs as part of their communication strategy
  • Marty Collins (Microsoft) started a blog called Marketing Today in January. She talks about the role of commenting in blogs (YouTube, 1:45).
  • Keith O’Brian (PR Week) explains how ‘PR’ can use Web 2.0 technologies, specifically video and blogs. (Beet.tv, 1:56)
    
  • Forrester Interview (Beet.tv, 2.12)
• For business blogs, policies to consider:
  • Who can blog?
  • Who needs to be reviewed before publishing?
  • The tension between corporate voice and personal voice
• For individual blogs, things to consider:
  • What’s the communication goal?
  • Who’s the audience?
  • How technically savvy am I?
• Blog hosting options
  • On your own server
  • Free services
  • Paid services
• This revolution is not just print!
  • Podcasts
  • Vodcasts
  • YouTube, Blip.tv, GoogleVideo
• Monitoring the blogspace
  • RSS is your friend
  • So is Technorati, GoogleBlogs …
• What it all means to business/political/news communicators
• Before we go … create an account on Bloglines and set up RSS feeds (some blogs are recommended).
  • How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed With Bloglines
• IF you like … create an account on WordPress and create a blog — including info on how to configure preferences and select a theme (design)
  • WordPress How-To’s (series, in progress)
    

Blogs of Note:

• The Blog Herald
• Christopher Carfi, The Social Customer Manifesto
• David Weinberger, Joho the Blog
• Jack Humphrey, Friday Traffic Report
• John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
• Hillel Cooperman, JacksonFishMarket
• Keith O’Brian, Ubiquitous Marketing (XML feed is not valid)
• Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick
• Mike Manuel, Media Guerilla (link blog)
• Robert Scobel, Scobelizer: The Tech Geek Blogger
• Shel Israel, Global Neighbourhoods (formerly Naked Conversations)
• Stephan Spencer, Stephan Spencer’s Ramblings
• Steve Rubel, Micropersuasion

Books to Read

• The Cluetrain Manifesto (cluetrain.com)
• The Long Tail
• Naked Conversations
• The Tipping Point
• Wikinomics