Getting the Word Out Through Blogger Outreach: "Marqui Post on Fear of the Blogosphere"

I received an e-mail recently from Janet Johnson over at Marqui's World about her post entitled "Fear of the Blogosphere". She had recently talked about blogging and social networks at a conference on Media Literacy & Teen Health. Some people who attended her talk (educators and social service people) experienced a lot of anger, fear, and frustration when they found out what Janet's perspective was about who is responsible, at least in part, for some of the horror stories involving social networking sites like MySpace and Live Journal.

Janet felt that parents bore some responsibility for these horror stories because they weren't knowledgeable enough about the dangers posed by their children posting too much personal, specific information online, and opening themselves up to predators. So she felt like she wanted to make amends by spreading the word about the seriousness of the situation. Specifically, she wants people to know:

- Kids are already out there. They're already engaging with their friends in the blogosphere.
- And Bobbie Eisenstock's rules of the road should be available to every parent wondering what to do about it.

Pass it on. Blogs and social networks are not going to go away. So let's figure out how to help each other deal with it. And let's show how the blogosphere can do some very good work.

I write about this on our class blog not only to help Janet spread the word but also to cite this as an instace of "blogger outreach" -- where one blogger reaches out to other bloggers in order to build a relationship and share ideas. How companies are using blogger outreach is one aspect we are interested in, among many other things, as part of our corporate blogging study.

How often and in what ways do you or your company use blogger outreach?

Student Questions About Corporate Blogging

For this past Tuesday's class students read the 95 Theses from the Cluetrain Manifesto and the Edelman/Intelliseek report "Talking from the Inside Out: The Rise of Employee Bloggers."

When students came to class I asked them to take out a blank sheet of paper and write down any questions they had about corporate blogging, either from the readings or anything else they wanted to know. We discussed a number of those questions in class, related to: the different types of corporate blogs, uses of corporate blogs, and how blogging might affect their career paths.

They also had a number of questions that we didn't have time to discuss so I told them we would could discuss them on Friday when John Cass from Backbone Media guest lectures on his study "Corporate Blogging: Is It Worth the Hype?"

I would also invite anyone in the blogosphere to offer their perspective on these questions as well. In having such a dialogue I hope we can address some of the so-called "Blog Anemia in Academica" ;-)**

Here are the questions we didn't get a chance to discuss:

- Who reads corporate blogs? What do we know about the audience of a specific corporate blog? How can you find out this information?

- How do you market a corporate blog? Is there anything special a company should do?

- For companies who have fired corporate bloggers (like Google, Friendster, Delta, Waterstone's, etc.) how are they managing corporate blogging now? For example, what is the status of the legal cases? What are their new policies or guidelines?

- How do blogs by executives compare to blogs from employees at lower levels in the hierarchy? Are they similar or different in terms of content, style, etc.?

- What are the societal effects of corporate blogs? Specifically, what is the relationship between corporate blogging and the "digital divide," if any?

- How are some of the practical issues of blogs managed? For example, does the phenomenon of information overload that applies to e-mail also apply to corporate blogging?

- What were the effects of the Cluetrain Manifesto on corporate blogging?

** If people are interested in blogging and academia be sure to check out the 2003 Chronicle of Higher Education article on "Scholars who blog", the "scholar bloggers" at Crooked Timber, and the 2006 HigherEdBlogCon conference.


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corporate blogging

A Few More Bloggers Needed For Corporate Blogging Study

So far we have 11 bloggers signed up for our corporate blogging study. Our goal is to reach 20 bloggers. If you are interested in participating in the project contact John Cass at Backbone Media (his email is john AT backbonemedia DOT com).

The purpose of the study is to better understand what makes a successful corporate blog, and in the process help a company to determine if they should blog and how they should blog. Students in the class will learn about corporate blogging, learn interviewing skills, and then interview two corporate bloggers with a view to determining how the blogger's company started blogging and what makes their blog successful.

Thanks to all the bloggers who have signed up so far and for the warm support from Toby Bloomberg (Diva Marketing) and others :-)

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corporate blogging interviewing

How Do You Record Conversations With Skype?

I recently read a post on Steve Rubel's blog about how he recorded his Social Media Tour interviews using Skype.

Does anyone know how to do this?

I tried using Sound Recorder (the freebie that comes with Windows) but it only picks up my side of the conversation when I use headphones.

As our class is preparing for our Corporate Blogging Study I was thinking that students could use Skype for the interviews with the corporate bloggers (assuming the corporate bloggers also used Skype) rather than paying long distance phone charges and using the old-fashioned tape recorder.

Please comment with any suggestions or e-mail me at w.carl AT neu.edu

Thanks!

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corporate blogging skype interviewing