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Number
92: March 16, 2005
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This week in Katydid:
Blogging
– CMAs on the Cheap
More than for any other reason, blogs have become popular tools because
they are so flexible. Last issue, The Weekly Katydid covered some
of the reasons a blog might become valuable to an organization: notably,
to
develop and extend relationships. If that piqued your interest, this
week we'll cover how to get started.
Web logs are simply content hosted through a web-based content
management application. Blogs are web sites, but the software allows you
to remotely post content without having to know HTML. The application
uses a template to display the information and stores your content and
preferences in a database. Generally, if you can compose e-mail, you can
handle a blog.
You could get started right away by setting up a free account with
one of the popular hosted blog sites. These sites run the web
application and allow users to set up individual accounts. You follow a
wizard-like interface to select a template for your site and can begin
posting your wisdom right away. The web address will look something like
yourname.typepad.com or www.livejournal.com/yourname.
Hosted Blog Sites
Hosted sites charge for greater flexibility, storage, options, or
customization. Organizations will want features such as multiple
authors, so that many members can contribute, and domain mapping, which
allows the hosted blog to appear with your web address
(www.yourname.com).
For those who want complete control and have the skills or services
of a web developer, you can obtain a license to run the web application
on your own server. This is often the way businesses go to maintain
control over brand elements; although, hosted blogs can be very seamless
in their presentation.
Server-Side Blog Publishing
The licensing fees vary for commercial uses. For personal use, most
of the site licenses are free or available open source. If your plan is
to make blogging part of your relationship marketing, then you might
want to pay for a commercial license in order to get support.
Alternatively, you can start your efforts with one of the free or
low-cost solutions and decide to move to a more professional version
later. However, make sure you can migrate the content easily.
When you host your own blog application, you can mix normal and blog
content. This gives you an inexpensive alternative to other content
management solutions. If some sections of your site remain static and a
few sections need regular updates, using blogs is ideal.
For regular postings such as customer updates, white papers, FAQs,
client newsletters, company news, company history, client feedback, or
essentially any page where you post lists of similar content, blogs are
a cost-effective and convenient solution.
Also, you can create dedicated blogs to function as client or
workgroup mini-sites. You can share files, post comments, and create a
history at the same time.
Before web logging, content management was often an all or nothing
affair. Internal web developers excited about learning a new technology
would develop the entire company site in a managed architecture.
Outsourced developers looking for a larger project size would also
encourage coding entire sites as templates. Only the largest companies
could afford it.
Unless you have thousands of documents or other media to manage,
blogging is one way to add content management to your web site without
having to rebuild the entire site. Additionally, you gain the ability to
delegate control to others and encourage involvement from customers.
Many organizations are experimenting with this technology; you owe it
to yourself to explore the possibilities. And who knows, you may find
yourself as one
of those vaunted thought leaders – or at least a
leading expert on knitting.
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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