Okay, one more item on blogging. Patrick Hirsch did a really good piece on how blogs are becoming a marketing tool for small companies on Tuesday’s Marketplace segment on NPR’s All Things Considered. AUDIO: 3 min MP3
Category Archives: Blogging
PhilAtkinson.org
Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. And now Phil is doing it. Blogging, that is. Phil is the head of the IT group at Learfield Communications and one of the smartest guys I know. So I can’t explain how he got close enough to the blog pool to fall in. He has resisted blogging because –he explains– he looks at computers all day and doesn’t want to spend one more minute than he has to in front of one. But he’s an interesting guy and I hope his blog reflects that. Drives a vintage GTO. Makes custom fireworks. Has the nutrition habits of a 12 year old. And I think that’s all I know about Phil but expect to learn more if the blog glue dries.
What blogs cost American business
Story on AdAge.com by Bradley Johnson (registration required):
U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. About 35 million workers — one in four people in the labor force — visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks — bloggers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break. Technorati, a blog search engine, now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009. Imagine the work that won’t get done then.
And a week doesn’t go by that someone asks me to explain “this blogging thing.”
Weblog Usability: Top 10 Mistakes
Online usability expert Jakob Nielsen gives us The Top Ten Design Mistakes for Weblog Usability in this weeks Alertbox:
1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
I sometimes get a little too cute with my post titles (#3) and I struggle to keep my focus narrow (#8) but, all in all, I’m giving smays.com high marks. He explains each of these and I urge my blogging friends to take 5 minutes to read and heed what Uncle Jakob has to say.
Don’t ask why we blog
Within the past week, two more of my co-workers (that I know about) started blogging. We’ll give them a chance to get their sea legs before we link them here. And two other friends emailed asking how to get started. What is the attraction? Is it just wanting to be involved in the latest “thing?” Why would some twenty-somthing feel the pull to start an online journal?
I suspect most of us have something to say but never had an easy way to express ourselves or a place to do so. Non-bloggers are quick to dismiss the entire idea. “Why would I want to read about somebody’s cat?” Or, “I’ve got better things to do with my life.”
It still amazes me how many bloggers share more of themselves in their online journals than in the course of their jobs and lives. Ben wrote that he leaned things about his father from reading his dad’s new blog. And some bloggers, like Dave, have a real gift for sharing thoughts and feelings.
Most bloggers would struggle to explain why they do it, but readily understand why others do.