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?