ContentRobot

Found this gem post on the Scobelizer blog today: Kid says blogging better than firetrucks

Earthlink held a “take your child to work day” last week and Staff Engineer Josh Kleinpeter wrote his experiences about when it was his turn to teach kids how to blog - after thinking that the tour of the firetruck would be the highlight of their day.

Go check out the pictures of the event and read what Josh say about it.

We agree with the little girl who said “blogging was cooler than a firetruck.” So listen to your inner child - blogging is fun!

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One of the most highly touted features of the Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. Personal home pages, personal diaries, and personal opinion, have been around since the early days of the web, so what is the fuss all about?

RSS Extends Web Page Viewing Away from the Browsers
It used to be that web browsers were the only way for people to view web pages. Now RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology extends that capability. RSS aggregators can be web-based (like Bloglines), desktop clients, and even portable devices allow you to subscribe to constantly updated content.

RSS is now being used to push not just notices of new blog entries, but also all kinds of data updates, including stock quotes, weather data, and photo availability.

Permalinks Point the Way Toward Discussion
But RSS is only part of what makes a weblog different from an ordinary web page. The permalink (or the ability to click through to the entire post’s page) effectively turned weblogs from an ease-of-publishing phenomenon into a conversational mess of overlapping communities.

For the first time it became relatively easy to point directly at a highly specific post on someone else’s site and talk about it. Discussions, chats, and friendships emerged or became more entrenched. Therefore, the permalink was the first - and most successful - attempt to build bridges between weblogs.

The “blogosphere” then can be thought of as a new, peer-to-peer equivalent to Usenet and bulletin-boards, the conversational watering holes of the early internet. Not only can people subscribe to each others’ sites, and easily link to individual comments on a page, but also, via a mechanism known as trackbacks, they can see when anyone else links to their pages, and can respond, either with reciprocal links, or by adding comments.

Web 2.0 Harnesses Collective Intelligence
An essential part of Web 2.0 is turning the web into a kind of global brain. The blogosphere becomes the equivalent of constant mental chatter or voice we hear in all of our heads.

The blogosphere has begun to have a powerful effect because search engines use link structure to help predict useful pages, and bloggers (as the most prolific and timely linkers) have a disproportionate role in shaping search engine results.

Considering what Wikipedia does, blogging then harnesses collective intelligence as a kind of filter or what James Suriowecki calls “the wisdom of crowds” or Dan Gillmor calls “we, the media.”

What it Means for Your Blog Efforts
Your blogs, which will evolve into a multi-authored, broad channel collaboration site, where it becomes your focus group and spokespeople for your brands. Because they are leveraged, not a regurgitation of the web site content, you’ll get input, reviews, shared pictures, etc. as you control and manage the conversation.

Adapted from Tim O’Reilly’s What Is Web 2.0

Not blogging yet? Don’t think you can? What’s holding you back? Here are 3 myths to what might be blocking you … and reasons why you should get blogging today.

Myth # 1: Blogging Doesn’t Provide Any Known Benefits
Perhaps you don’t realize how huge the benefits are, and how much they may outweigh any monetary or time costs involved.

Are you looking for a bigger audience for your web site or attracting more attention from search engines? If you do it right, blogging can make it possible. Why? The structure of a blog, along with how they automatically generate content feeds, makes them the best food for your friendly neighborhood search engine spider.

Want visitors to come back to your site again and again? An informative blog that engages your audience can create a reader courtship, where over time, they can gauge if they like you as they get to know you. And remember that people buy from people who they like, hence, potentially shortening the sales cycle.

Blogs also personalize your brand. And from this “buzz” or “vibe” people are more apt to “buy into” what you are selling if your personality meshes with theirs.

Myth #2: Blogging is Hard
When you are busy, and who isn’t, it’s hard to add yet another task to your day. By establishing the right toolkit and technologies from the beginning, you’ll be left to just write blog posts.

While it’s not hard to establish your blog, it does does take time to nurture it. Stick with it before prematurely abandoning your project. It takes several months to even a year to establish a loyal readership. You’ll find, that over time, writing and feeding your blog will become natural and hopefully even fun.

Myth #3: You Can’t Write or You Don’t Have Writers
The best blogging comes from a personal, casual conversational tone. While you can skip the business jargon, you should pay attention to basic grammar rules, however.

It’s probably will be easier to find bloggers in your organization. Who are your biggest product evangelists? Find them and get them writing.

Finally, blog posts don’t always have to be long article-type entries, they can also be quick thoughts or observations. Your audience will be thrilled with a few paragraphs every day, as long as they’re informative and consistent.

In Sum
Hope we’ve busted some of these myths to get you blogging. And don’t forget you can always hire ContentRobot to help you to build and nurture your blog. Contact us today!

A great post found at the devin + reams = dreams blog called “The Ease of Blogging.” He was thinking about his own blogging experience and wondered why people blog.

In his wisdom, he submitted the underlying principles of blogging, which he calls “The Ease (E’s) of Blogging”:

• Educate
• Entertain
• Emote
• Engage
• Earn

ContentRobot thinks that does describe a lot of bloggers. Are you ready to become one? Contact us! Read the Entire Post >

Thanks to Problogger, we found an interesting argument brewing between blogs and websites.

Simon Dumenco at AdAge wrote an article called “A Blogger is Just a Writer with a Cooler Name” that argues that blogs are just websites and that is too much focus on them.

He says …

And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or Wordder.

It’s just software, people! The underlying creative/media function remains exactly the same. Ultimately, it comes down to this: In the very near future, there are only going to be two types of media people: those who can reliably work and publish (or broadcast) incredibly fast, and those … who can’t.

Adrants answered back that Blogging is Just an Easy Way to Publish a Website.

They say …

All this developing technology surrounding the blog platform is a very good thing. Some very inventive and helpful tools have been created but there’s no reason they should be limited to blogs or that they should be used to somehow classify blogs as better or worse than a “regular” website.

There’s also no reason a “regular” website should whole heartedly embrace weblog technology to publish its content in the exact same tone and style it always has - just a lot cheaper and a lot more efficiently.

What we say
Some key points we would like to share from Probloggers (and his readers) analysis :

• Blogging is writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.
• Blogs ARE fundamentally websites (one of many varieties) that have more dimensions and flexibility, including dialogue and conversation as intrinsic components.
• Blogging does have an element of ‘cool’ about it at present but the next ‘cool’ thing is never far away. It’s important to position yourself for the future however you communicate, share, and converse with prospects, clients, friends, etc.
• Most readers don’t care and some don’t even know they are reading a blog. What they want is content that is helpful, relevant, informative and/or entertaining.
  

Pop-Up Blog: a short term blog.

According to Clickz, this new term has been coined by ElectricArtists.

Pop-Up blogs are created with a clear lifespan set before it is launched. They pop up and fade away, and their brief life spans correspond with an event, product launch, or other time-sensitive cause.
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We recently read a great quote in November 2005’s EContent magazine.

The flurry of activity and excitement around content creation and collaboration tools, as well as social software “is positive proof that people are the killer app.”

~ Jerry Michalski, Socialtext

ContentRobot agrees with Jerry and sees blogs as a way for people to really begin to share their views and expertise.

Let us develop a blog for you today, so you can share what you know and have to say! We’ll help you find your voice and passion, create a great design, and get you blogging in no time. Contact us today!
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