ContentRobot

Now that a lot of the technical groundwork has been laid, it’s time to focus on the content. What topics will the Timex blog cover? What will be important to the readers? Since the blog is all about the Timex-sponsored athletes, what kinds of content should be included?

The Taxonomy
The taxonomy is basically a system of classification that describes the site’s contents as a whole. Blog categories help to define the topics, group the contents, and create relationships between the posts on the site. Approach the blog’s taxonomy like you would determine a web site’s site map.

As of today, the initial athlete blog taxonomy is unfolding as such (the main categories are show with one dash and subcategories are shown with two dashes):

- Athletes
- Racing
- - Race Events
- - Race Reports
- Training
- - Diet & Nutrition
- - Injuries
- Watches
- - What the Athletes Wear
- - Reviews

The great thing about blogs (as compared to traditional web sites) is that its taxonomy can be built and/or modified on-the-fly should new topics arise or change in some way.

Navigation & Static Pages
Besides the blog posts, there are static pages that every blog needs. The athlete blog’s main navigation will look something like this: About | Athletes | Race Events | News | Contact Us. The secondary navigation includes Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages.

Writing the Content
All the Timex athletes will be encouraged to author the blog and contribute as much of their experience as they can while on the tour. All the posts will be written in their own words and they are looking forward to communicating with their fans.

Be sure to develop a strategic, but flexible content strategy. This can include: defining your topics, deciding who your authors will be, and determining your short- and long-term blog post goals.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, taxonomy, business blogging

Next decision: what other software will Timex need to effectively manage its new blog?

Images
ContentRobot recommended that Timex take advantage of Flickr professional account. At $24.95 a year, it is a steal to store and manage a bunch of athlete and event photos. By storing them in a common place, bloggers will be able to easily add any of these these images into their posts.

RSS Feed Tracking and Management
One of the metrics that Timex needs to track is the blog’s RSS feeds. Feedburner will allow them to track the main RSS feed, athlete feeds, and event feeds. The statistics will let Timex stay on top of blog traffic, publicize, and distribute the blog’s contents as they wish.

Blog Metrics
Performancing offers a comprehensive realtime blog metrics tool that breaks down and analyzes the traffic, down to the posts and comment level, for a holistic view of blog performance. This great, online tool is free and their team is always improving it.

Newsletter
While we think everyone knows all about RSS and reads feeds daily, the reality is that a lot of people don’t even realize they are viewing a blog. Feedblitz will allow Timex Blog visitors to subscribe to a newsletter. Subscribers can keep-up-to-date with the blog with a daily email that includes all the new posts in a nicely designed format.

As you can see, blog add-ons (particularly the ones that help you track metrics) are an absolute must for business blogging. ContentRobot will continue to be on the lookout for great ways to manage blogs and recommend the best-in-class tools available.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blog software, business blogging

Next decision: what blogging platform would be best?

Recently, ContentRobot performed a head-to-head test of 2 popular software options - WordPress and Drupal. Since Timex has its own servers, hosting either of these platforms is a viable choice (among others out there). In any case, these platforms are both open source and free - we love that!

Option #1: WordPress
WordPress has many fans - with good reason. It is simple to implement and you can enhance your blogging experience with a variety of plug-ins and design templates.

Option #2: Drupal
Drupal is also great - ContentRobot’s blog-powered web site uses version 4.7. This option is a robust (perhaps complex) and scaleable content management software that has provides much more than just blogging tools.

Timex Blog Requirements

• Great design that is aligned with the web site and appropriately branded
• Multiple authors (there are 45 athletes) from all over the world
• Each athlete would author their own blog
• The ease for writing blog posts
• Simple image upload and manipulation
• Ability to moderate posts and comments (and establish a workable writing workflow)

The Platform Solution
The blog template design was not a factor, as we would be developing a unique template for Timex no matter the platform. So, the major factor was ease for blogging and moderation.

Using that as the tipping point, we chose to implement WordPress. (For all your Drupal fans out there, we are implementing some very Drupal-like “modules” for both the design and back-end management.)

As such, it was a snap to install the WordPress sofware, but we continue to configure it with any necessary plugins to round out the blog’s full experience.

So, while you may have a favorite platform, it might be necessary to evaluate your short- and long-term goals for your blogging project to come to a solution that fits.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blog platform, WordPress, Drupal, blog-powered web sites

One of the first considerations for our Timex Athlete blog was: what domain name would we use?

The Current Domain Situation
Timex already has its own servers and domain at www.timex.com. This is a good start because it is always preferable to have your own domain name for your business blog. Not only does it assist in branding, it looks more professional than using a domain like timex.blogger.com (Don’t misunderstand, blogger is great for many blogging projects, but is probably not a good idea for enterprise blogs.)

Idea #1: Use a Subdomain or Subdirectory for the Blog
Should the blog reside as part of the main corporate web site? In this case, it might sit at blog.timex.com or timex.com/blog. Good thought - but what happens if Timex expands its blogging effort to have more than just the current athlete blog? What domain would the next one use?

Idea #2: Create its Own Domain
What about the blog having its own domain name? There are some inherent advantages to this approach. Specifically, it allows Timex to create more than one blog and create a bigger online presence at the same time.

The Solution
We determined that the Timex blogs would best be served with their own domain, www.timexblogs.com. Any and all Timex blogs will reside here with its own unique subdomain name. The solution provides Timex with the ability to develop multiple blogs as its blog strategy unfolds, and (maybe best of all) no domain reconfiguring down the line.

So, think beyond your immediate needs before jumping into your blogging project. What does your future blogging landscape look like. Will you (ever) have more than one blog? Answer these questions and your domain names dilemma will disappear.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, business blog, corporate blog, blog domain

Tag clouds visually depict the contents of a web site or blog. The first tag cloud appeared on Flickr (the photo sharing site) and was based on Jim Flanagan’s Search Referral Zeitgeist, which visualized web site referrers.

These weighted lists show the most popular categorizes in an emphasized manner while displaying them alphabetically. Larger fonts often indicate a higher prevalence for an individual keyword.

You’ll notice that ContentRobot’s blog topic cloud reveals that business blogging and blogging basics are among the biggest areas that we write about.

Check out some more tag cloud examples:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags
• http://del.icio.us/tag
• http://www.last.fm/explore
• http://www.technorati.com/tag

Want your own tag cloud? Check out these links:

• TagCloud
• ZoomClouds
• Eurester Swicki

Or use these plug-ins on your specific type of blog:

• For Blosxom, try this Perl script
• For Drupal, try Tagadelic
• For Movable Type, try PHP script
• For WordPress, try Ultimate Tag Warrior

One of the coolest implementations of a tag cloud has to go to Snapshirts, who can customize your web site or blog and put it right on a shirt. Go check it out.

Did you know that there were several types of blogs to create? Maybe one of them can fit into your plans.

• Podcasting – This type of blog provides a web feed of audio files (although, increasingly, people apply this term to any video and other media available for anyone to download). “Blogcasting” “rsscasting,” “webcasting,” and “audio blogging” can also be terms for downloading or streaming audio and video media types. To learn more, check out Adam Curry’s site, as he is considered a founding father of podcasting.

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