http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Communication/Blogging A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Communication and Blogging in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Communication/Blogging http://tc.eserver.org/34996.html http://tc.eserver.org/34996.html Anti-employer blogs, those which criticize companies or their employees, are posing significant legal and ethical challenges for corporations. The important legal issue is the conflict between the employee's legal duty of loyalty to the employer and the employee's right to free speech. Although U.S. and state law describes what an employee may or may not say in a blog, corporations should encourage employees to contribute to the process of creating clear, reasonable policies that will help prevent expensive court cases. The important ethical issue concerning anti-employer blogs is whether an employee incurs an ethical duty of loyalty. In this article, I conclude that there is no such ethical duty. The legal duty of loyalty, explained in a company-written policy statement that employees must endorse as a condition of employment, offers the best means of protecting the legal and ethical rights of both employers and employees. http://tc.eserver.org/34380.html http://tc.eserver.org/34380.html Blogger outreach has quickly become an integral part of many brands’ marketing efforts. The blogosphere enables interactive dialogue between bloggers and consumers, and blogger outreach opens the door for conversation between your brand, bloggers and consumers. For any company that is looking to leverage the blogosphere for your marketing or PR strategy, here are 5 benefits of blogger outreach. http://tc.eserver.org/33926.html http://tc.eserver.org/33926.html Don't waste your money on a business blog (unless search engine marketing is an important piece of your overall marketing efforts and you're going to invest the time and effort into making it work). http://tc.eserver.org/33515.html http://tc.eserver.org/33515.html Twitter is now a must-have tool if you're publishing content, undertaking online marketing, or looking to keep up with the latest trends in anything web related. http://tc.eserver.org/33403.html http://tc.eserver.org/33403.html Blogs are the lifeblood of the "social internet" and with around 60 million blogs currently in existence they provide a large proportion of the content available online. This gives them huge potential as a tool for companies to engage with an audience in a way that hasn't really been possible before, but very few businesses seem to be taking advantage of the phenomenon. Why is that? http://tc.eserver.org/33408.html http://tc.eserver.org/33408.html To date, ROI hasn't been applied to blogs. This is partly due to blogging recent introduction to the marketing mix. Many blogging experts have suggested calculating a blog ROI is impossible. As a professor, I teach students how to tie marketing to the bottom line. Calculating ROI for a blog should be no harder than calculating it for other marketing components. To place ROI measurements in context, you must first understand how blogs fulfill different business objectives. http://tc.eserver.org/33409.html http://tc.eserver.org/33409.html Unlike corporate websites, b-blogs are cheap to launch and easy to maintain, thanks to powerful, easy-to-use tools. Unlike spam, or junk e-mail, b-blogs aren't intrusive; users must click to them. Done well, b-blogs provide a fast, informal way to share information -- project updates, research or test results, product-release news, industry headlines -- inside and outside your company. http://tc.eserver.org/33410.html http://tc.eserver.org/33410.html Sun Microsystems' policies about employee blogging: "You are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first, but we expect you to read and follow the advice in this note." http://tc.eserver.org/33411.html http://tc.eserver.org/33411.html I wrote in a recent report, that companies should have a blogging policy to provide guidelines for employees who want to have blogs. This primarily relates to employee's personal blogs and lays out the guidelines of what the company expects. As expected, policies will vary greatly depending on company circumstance. Here are a few examples and also, my variation. http://tc.eserver.org/33412.html http://tc.eserver.org/33412.html Below is a list of 15 companies that really get corporate blogging and produce blogs that are informative, fascinating, and a joy to read even for people who aren’t die-hard fans of the company. http://tc.eserver.org/33413.html http://tc.eserver.org/33413.html Maybe your business isn’t a massage clinic, but you are probably as passionate about the heart of your business as my client is about hers. I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about your business being an extension of who you are. For your business, I believe a blog is the answer. But not a stupid blog. http://tc.eserver.org/33414.html http://tc.eserver.org/33414.html How should we evaluate the corporate blogs that do exist? Laura and I have come up with this list of criteria that we think the best corporate blogs should have. This might change as we start working through the list as we, like you, may learn a few things about what can and should be done with corporate blogs. http://tc.eserver.org/31472.html http://tc.eserver.org/31472.html New technology is changing the face of internal and external organizational communication. Blogs are evolving at a tremendous pace and are not simply the stuff of boring journals and ideological rants. If you feel as if you’ve been caught napping while blogging has taken off, fear not. Blogs provide a way for organizations to bypass the media, to get quick feedback and to take on issues they would otherwise ignore or miss entirely. For an individual, a blog can be a way to set one’s own agenda and be heard. But it’s the political blog that’s fueling the trend so far—an intelligent PR tactic. http://tc.eserver.org/31427.html http://tc.eserver.org/31427.html First it was e-mail messages, next it was PDA messaging, and now it is blogs. These networking tools are all widely used by employees. They also sometimes become a source of contentious litigation when employers become concerned over the risk of corporate liability and public disclosure of confidential information that these new technologies pose. http://tc.eserver.org/31387.html http://tc.eserver.org/31387.html The world of blogging, also known as the blogosphere, is wild, highly viral, uncensored and unedited. It is also the newest and most critical tool in a business communicator's toolbox. Why? Because with blogs, communicators can quickly, regularly and easily deliver a variety of information to a highly targeted audience. A good blog will create a more personal relationship with customers and influencers by showing that the company is listening and responding to what they have to say. http://tc.eserver.org/31399.html http://tc.eserver.org/31399.html When news reports announced that Apple Computer was suing unnamed individuals (presumed to be employees) who had allegedly leaked information about a prototype Apple product to several blog news sites, it raised a number of questions. What does the lawsuit mean for freedom of expression and the role of journalists who serve an information-hungry audience? How will the courts balance the fundamental right of freedom of expression against a company's claims that trade secrets have been violated on a blog? http://tc.eserver.org/31366.html http://tc.eserver.org/31366.html “We need to get global awareness fast,” says your CEO. “Make it happen.” When faced with the need to rapidly increase your organization’s visibility around the world, there are some daunting and expensive challenges, particularly if your company does not have a local presence in the countries it is targeting. Hiring local public relations and marketing communication talent, translating collateral into local languages and identifying and getting into both formal and informal business networks are just a few of these challenges. http://tc.eserver.org/31320.html http://tc.eserver.org/31320.html When bloggers attack, we, as trained communication experts, must be ready to respond, and must recognize bloggers as a new wave of reporters. Many are key influencers who can rally a community against you. Working with bloggers and responding quickly builds rapport and relationship. And gets you the bigger story—maybe even a more balanced story. http://tc.eserver.org/31333.html http://tc.eserver.org/31333.html In early March, The New York Times ran a story with the headline "Wal-Mart enlists bloggers in PR campaign." While the story itself is of interest as an example of how some PR agencies increasingly see blogs as legitimate communication channels, it is of greater interest to look at what the Edelman PR agency did in this specific case acting on behalf of their client—what went right and, more important, what didn't. http://tc.eserver.org/31317.html http://tc.eserver.org/31317.html For all the talk about corporate blogs, there still seems to be considerable debate about their value. As of early June, though, those questions should have been put to rest. General Motors illustrated just one of the benefits of blogs—bypassing the media and taking your message directly to the public—in its response to a column that appeared in The New York Times. http://tc.eserver.org/31326.html http://tc.eserver.org/31326.html We are hearing and reading a lot these days about the new age of transparency, in which organizations must go beyond traditional, tightly controlled communication and engage in a "naked conversation" with their customers, communities, employees and other stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/31315.html http://tc.eserver.org/31315.html Whether you're grappling with how to reach out to bloggers discussing your industry or contemplating creating a corporate blog, it's vital for you as a communicator to understand what's being said about your company in cyberspace—and how to play an active role in the dialog. http://tc.eserver.org/31316.html http://tc.eserver.org/31316.html The influence of bloggers and their readers has erupted into campaigns that have affected large, well-known companies and brands—Wal-Mart, Kryptonite Locks, Land Rover, Sony. Smaller firms could suffer even more, like the New York camera retailer that went out of business. Don't let this happen to your organization. http://tc.eserver.org/31253.html http://tc.eserver.org/31253.html A debate continues to rage about how important and influential media such as blogs, podcasts and social networking sites really are. At the heart of this debate is the question, Is the blogosphere really an appropriate place for executives and others in positions of power who have everything to lose? http://tc.eserver.org/31254.html http://tc.eserver.org/31254.html As the publisher of CEO Blog Watch, I pay close attention the evolution of corporate communication, especially as it pertains to blogging. In fact, the mission of CEO Blog Watch is to chronicle the continued rise of corporate and CEO blogs. As someone who monitors CEO blogging, I can tell you that the most commonly asked question on the subject is, "Should a CEO blog?" Here's my take on the subject. http://tc.eserver.org/28081.html http://tc.eserver.org/28081.html Corporate blogging is rapidly becoming another way for companies to communicate with their customers and increase internal communication. Learn about the advantages and future of blogging and how to get started. http://tc.eserver.org/26875.html http://tc.eserver.org/26875.html Wikis and Web logs (blogs) make a big impact on the Web, but they can also be useful in an enterprise. A community is a group of people with common interests, goals, or responsibilities, such as a project team or an interest group. Combine wikis and blogs with existing collaborative tools to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of enterprise teams. http://tc.eserver.org/26688.html http://tc.eserver.org/26688.html In a broad sense that the weblog can be beneficial to the business world as a whole. More specifically, however, it provides technical communicators with unprecedented opportunites at innovation and leadership. http://tc.eserver.org/25586.html http://tc.eserver.org/25586.html In taking the costs of publishing to their near vanishing point, blogging represents one of the most democratic media or media formats in history. As such, traditional print journalism’s natural response has been to embrace the form, encourage it, proliferate it, and to use blogs to fulfill journalism’s mission of informing an electorate and, therefore, bettering democracy. Not quite. http://tc.eserver.org/25558.html http://tc.eserver.org/25558.html While a few educators have already started using blogs in the classroom, more have focused on the potential of blogging in teaching and learning. http://tc.eserver.org/25475.html http://tc.eserver.org/25475.html Web-logging software has received plenty of attention as a quick and easy way to post content to a web site. Web logs (blogs) tend to fall into two categories: personal web logs that function sort of like diaries, and informational blogs that target a readership with a shared interest. But web logging can also be used to support knowledge management (KM)¡ªthe effort within an organization to share knowledge and help the organization achieve its mission. This form of web logging, called knowledge logging, or k-logging, is emerging as an inexpensive alternative to large-scale KM solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/25480.html http://tc.eserver.org/25480.html This research investigates what form of communication is made possible through the weblog and what its uses are for the future. Taking Habermas' theory, it will be investigated whether blogs offer a platform for what he calls the 'ideal speech situation'. Conditions for the ideal speech situation are that everyone has equal access to the communication, that there are no power differences between the participants and that the participants act truthfully towards each other. http://tc.eserver.org/25453.html http://tc.eserver.org/25453.html We must understand, first, why virtual communities are considered important, and, second, what the characteristics of a virtual community are. Then, we must determine if at least some blogs have these characteristics.