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Your Blog is Your Party: A Lesson in Posting Frequency

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The title really sums it up well here. But the following bit of information is hugely valuable. And will surely be one of those lessons that will be etched in our minds here at 901am as we continue to grow.

If you don’t post regularly, people (and search engines) will tend to give your blog less priority. Let’s put aside those who blog as a hobby – that’s a different story.

If you or your Company have a blog or would like to start one, don’t blog once in a blue moon. Blogging is more than sharing infomation – it’s:

* engaging in conversations
* talking to people
* listening to comments and considerations
* providing useful information

Read The Rest of The Article on Why Your Blog Is Your Party

Originally posted on November 30, 2006 @ 10:28 am

Female Venture Capitalist is a Pioneer Blogger

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A Blogger is a Blogger right? Well when it comes to females in the Venture Capitalist space. Susan Wu is a pioneer. Much like her investment arena. She one of 3 partners who’s heavily involved in Quick Start and her area of passion is virtual worlds. Definetly someone to plug into your rolodex if you are moving into that arena and want a friendly female perspective.

Her new blog Reality should be a great read.

Susan Wu is an associate at Charles River Ventures, and becomes the latest in the rare group of female venture capitalists writing a blog (you can count them on one hand).

The blog is called Reality, a play on the theme of her interest, which is virtual worlds. She’s one of the three partners at CRV who made waves earlier this month after launching the Quickstart seed program for start-ups.

Via VentureBeat

Originally posted on November 30, 2006 @ 9:59 am

Companies Sending Wrong Message With Blogging Policies

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Ed Yourdon of NODRUOY Inc. believes some companies are sending the wrong message with corporate blogging policies.

office cubicalI was in a business meeting a few days ago, listening to a senior executive present his company’s strategic plan for 2007. One of his goals is to establish a new and interesting division of the company as a “thought leader” in its market segment.

Even though it’s a somewhat fuzzy phrase, most of us would understand a “thought leader” to be a company whose ideas, opinions, analyses, and other expressions of “thought” are considered by its peers as being the most authoritative, credible, and pioneering in its industry. Intrigued by the identification of this goal, I asked the executive if he was planning any blogs or wikis to help create the overall image of a “thought leader.” He was a little puzzled at first, wondering if I meant that he should be blogging, or that his marketing department should create an official corporate blog.

“No, no, no,” I responded. “What I meant was: are you encouraging your employees to create lots of individual blogs, so they can be recognized in your industry as the people who, as individuals, are ‘thought leaders’?”

I tend to agree. I think corporate blogs should be a process of empowering people who empower your company. Likewise get your customers to create content about your companies. Remember blogs are about open communication.

Disclaimer: I do blog consulting for companies and tend to be sligtly biased in my approach. Sorry folks.

Originally posted on December 3, 2006 @ 11:53 am

Blogging As Historical Parallel To City Building

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It’s been a little over a year since I really made a push into professional blogging with a passion. There have been a lot of things that happened along the way. I see much of the blogging scene as parallel to ancient city building. cities

And there are many types of cities. And not all are for every type of resident. And then there are those who aren’t even meant to dwell in the cities.

Fine Fools was a type of society with its own community structure. In some ways we were a city of comedy, and community. We had a good time. In the end we needed more structure to survive and we dispersed.

9rules at the time was a city with no structure and an overwhelming community. It was like moving from a small town to Manhattan. You get run over. It operates differently as well with many owners. Many times I felt like the black sheep as I was not an owner but a servant to a master. Definetly not the city for me. 9rules was great in that it’s a great city to meet people that are similar to yourself. I’ve managed to meet lots of 9rulers who I can find similar characteristics.

BlogMedia was a haven of sorts. Small enough to be community, and big enough to be a small city. The landscape changed largely and I was happy to be a dweller and a master. But being a master is not always my call.

I have never been apart of b5media but it seems to me to be a large city owned by few and with many servants. Although I’m sure the masters of the city make their servants feel like masters and the masters are often the servants. That would be what I can see from a distance.

Even WordPress.com offers many aspects of a blog network in that many are connected, and yet all own their own. But do you own your site independently? Or are you relying on the good will and resources of another. Do you rely on the ability of the WordPress.com community to push traffic your way and to help you build your own unique neighborhood? Yes, and their are many advantages to that.

Likewise in ancient times their were many types of cities under different rules, and different rulers. Sometimes its alright to want to wander around in the desert with no city at all.

Blogging is unique because it allows us to build our own cities. And to invite people to dwell among us. Blogging in many aspects is an ancient art returned to a modern era where we occupy virtual spaces of creativity to share amongst each other. Blogging allows anyone to be the master of his own domain. And to have the choice to dwell among a people or to dwell outside the city gates.

The choice is yours. Do you blog in the city, do you create your own city? Or do you wander around outside the gates until you find your own way. Your own road.

Originally posted on December 1, 2006 @ 9:28 am

Blogging as pedagogic practice

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More Teachers and School Districts are using blogs and blog networks. But what about mentors and their pupils. This article is a great insight.

Blogs come to us as the latest in a series of technological innovations that have been hailed for their revolutionary potential (Mitchell 1999). They share in the utopic aura of the personal computer, the internet, the mobile phone, the wireless network and most recently the ipod.

On the other hand, blogs have also been dismissed as just another software program that encourages the internet equivalent of vanity publishing. Hailed as citizen journalists by some, bloggers are rejected, as just the latest incarnation of the scandal/attack instincts of tabloid journalism, by others. In education, blogs are pitted against their predecessors, (primarily discussion boards and email) which are now seen as “traditional” technologies.

While this is a simplistic overview of the blogsphere and its representations it begins to signal the complexity of the field in which blogging occurs and tries to understand itself. It signals something of the “it” moment in which blogging is currently being introduced to a wider public. However it is also indicative of the mechanistic way in which blogging is being explored and understood. Too many people are asking what blogs can do before they really understand what blogs are. I believe this is particularly true in the two spheres that concern me most as a journalism educator.

Via

Originally posted on November 30, 2006 @ 5:54 pm