June 24, 2005

The questions keep coming! And I'm working to post answers as quickly as possible. One thing that's nice, we're generating plenty of RSS feeds to Our Dear Subscribers!

I'm going to post this in the "extended entry" format again, just for fun. Who said you can't mix things up as you go along?

Q: Regarding "Dark Blogs": do you have any case studies for how blogs are being used on the enterprise level?

A: The most interesting study was just published on June 13, about a big pharmaceutical company in the UK, and how they launched an internal blog. You can read it here, where Suw Charman wrote the business case study.

Q: What recommendations do you have regarding opening blogs for public comments (similar to a newsgroup) vs. limiting the blog to owner comments. This seems to be a key decision that must be made to be successful.

A: As we noted in our presentation, if you don't open your blog to other's comments, you're not having a dialogue. And if you're conducting a monologue, how is your blog different from your web site?

I'm a fervent believer - if you're going to use the blogosphere as an opportunity for communications with your community, have a dialogue. Enable comments. You'll want to make sure you've got your internal house in order first, in terms of planning what you will/won't stand in terms of comments, and how they will be reviewed.

Q: many blogs refer to things others have written - interpretation of copyright fair use seems prtty liberal. any guidelines for blogs?

A: As we noted, always, always attribute wherever possible. Give credit where credit is due. And check your facts (to make sure they're facts) before posting. If you're writing something that you'd like to protect, consider using the creative commons deed, found here.

The blogosphere is both self-cleansing and an honorable place – in spite of liberal use of references, ‘re-blogging,' etc. I'm sure that as more corporations (and their attorneys) get involved, more will be done with proper attributions, legal and copyright issues.

Q: Have you ever run into problems getting a blog indexed by the top Search Engines?

A: As we noted before, Ping-o-Matic can help. Also, make sure (if it's important that your blog IS indexed, that you do the best you can to optimize it and make it search engine friendly. As we mentioned in our presentation, have a look at our Search Engine Optimization whitepaper for tips and tricks – and a great checklist for SEO. You'll find it here.

Posted by at June 24, 2005

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