BadgerFiles

Have something to say? Join the global conversation and blog it.

Blogs are the communication cornerstone of Web 2.0, and according to the premiere blog search engine Technocratic (technocratic), which currently tracks over 57 million blogs, the blogosphere doubles in size every 230 days. Prominent marketing blogger Seth Godin identifies three types of blogs. “Cat blogs are blogs for and by the person blogging.” These are diary style pages often associated with MySpace. The target readers are a close group of friends and family members.

“Boss blogs are used to communicate to a defined circle of people.” These blogs are ideal for keeping group members up to date. For example, I manage a blog that provides authoritative information for people who are interested in Mifflinburg wrestling at miffwrestling.com. Blogs are an ideal medium for any project or club that needs to keep members informed in real time, but be warned, visitors won’t engage in conversation on a “boss” blog.

The third type of blog Godin identifies is Viral blogs. “These are the blogs that are changing the face of marketing, journalism, and the spread of ideas.” Godin’s blog ranks 33 among Technorati blogs, with over 18,000 links from over 6,500 blogs pointing to sethgodin.typepad.com. In contrast, my blog ranks 1,265,916 with 10 links from 3 blogs pointing to badgerfiles.com. Godin and I both blog about ideas, but whose ideas do you think spread faster?

Jim Cunningham, Chief Technology Officer at Penn College, says the value of blogs for individuals is that “blogging provides an opportunity to have your thoughts, concerns, political views, expertise, etc. published in a format that provides world-wide coverage.” Cunningham uses his blog at jec1230.blogspot.com as an archive for his Sun-Gazette columns, which gives his writings the potential to reach more than his column’s print circulation.

Mark Hinkle, Vice President of Community and Business Development at Zenoss, thinks that blogs gives companies “a more human face. People find it easier to relate to them and have a more favorable opinion [of the company], or at the very least they feel more inclined to try to have a conversation.” Zenoss, an enterprise IT monitoring start up, communicates with customers at blog.zenoss.com about its products, services, and enterprise monitoring in general.

Even if a company is not actively blogging, it should monitor the blogosphere to see what its customers are saying. Turning the other cheek could cost customers.

Last year, Hinkle posted his poor customer support experience with Dell on his personal blog at encoreopus.com and openly talked about spending his IT dollars elsewhere. His post was only one in a long line of Dell horror stories within the past few years that severely hurt the company’s reputation. In an effort to restore a favorable customer view, a Dell representative contacted Hinkle directly to fix the problems with his laptop. Hinkle blogged about his positive experience, too.

Like the traditional web, blogs give people and companies a voice; however, with blogs the technical barrier to entry is negligible. Cunningham says, “in one sense a blog is just an easy way to maintain a web site, sort of a poor man’s content management system. No need to learn HTML or Dreamweaver.”

Individuals can choose from a variety of free blog services, such as Blogger (blogger.com) or Wordpress (wordpress.com). The advantage to a hosted service is that all you need to do to get started is register with the service, choose a page style, and post your thoughts.

A disadvantage to using a hosting service is that your web address is not unique to you. Also, you can only use the options the service makes available to you, and your ability to customize is limited.

For full control, choose a stand alone blogging platform. Wordpress is arguably the most widely used option and runs the free blogging service at wordpress.com. Since Word press is open source software, anything from the program’s code to its look and feel is changeable. Features can be added through plugins, which are most often developed by community developers. Maintaining your own blogging software means you can integrate the blog into an existing web site, and your blog is associated with your domain name.

Installing and managing your own blog does require technical knowledge about web design and servers. However, a novice web master can tackle the challenge.

For an overview of Web 2.0 and blogging, read Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web available at http://squidoo.com/seth.

Originally published in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette on February 25, 2007.