Photo by nanpalmero on Flickr

This past month, Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) made a critical mistake on Twitter. Out of the blue, he blocked several local reporters from reading his tweets. Members of the Texas media, including Tom Benning from the Dallas Morning News, received the blocked notice when they attempted to view the [...]]]>

Photo by nanpalmero on Flickr

This past month, Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) made a critical mistake on Twitter. Out of the blue, he blocked several local reporters from reading his tweets. Members of the Texas media, including Tom Benning from the Dallas Morning News, received the blocked notice when they attempted to view the Governor’s Twitter feed. When asked about the message, Perry’s press office admitted to reporters that the governor is solely in control of his own Twitter feed, confirming  that he personally blocked these reporters from his feed. As a result, Perry is the brunt of jokes and more news stories than his press office can handle.

While any social media platform user can block specific people from seeing content or information through privacy settings, it’s not the best approach. Unless your personal safety or security is in jeopardy, your social media profiles carry unstated “open door” policies. When you “open the door” and create a profile, you need to keep the door open and be transparent with your followers regardless of who they are. Pulling back, placing limitations or blocking access, especially when you are a pubic figure, fuels the media and the public to assume information is being hidden from them.

If you feel you need to build a wall around your social media presence, think twice about creating profiles in online communities. Public figures like Perry should think three times. The public expects access to public figures, thus they shouldn’t pick and choose who accesses their profiles. By doing so, their actions could undermine their credibility and lose the public’s trust.

Whether it was his intention or not, Governor Perry just placed a spotlight on his tweets. Now reporters, opponents and constituents will be paying more attention to what Perry says online. This incident gives further credence to why Twitter hired former Capitol Hill staffer Adam Sharp to represent Twitter in Washington, DC and help policymakers understand and use the platform.

Social media is not for everyone. It’s just one of the new tools we can use to communicate with others. If you, or your organization do not feel comfortable with its openness, avoid participating. It is better to find other ways to communicate with key audiences than publicly closing your social media doors, which could build suspicion and distrust among your followers.

I’m an avid Twitter user. While I use Twitter for news monitoring and information gathering, I also use it as an engagement tool — sending messages directly targeting Tweeters or adding hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a hash sign and without spaces, occurring within a tweet.

It’s surprising how many organizations and spokespeople on [...]]]>

I’m an avid Twitter user. While I use Twitter for news monitoring and information gathering, I also use it as an engagement tool — sending messages directly targeting Tweeters or adding hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a hash sign and without spaces, occurring within a tweet.

It’s surprising how many organizations and spokespeople on Twitter miss the opportunity to target their messages and boost visibility by not including relevant hashtags in their tweets. Each hashtag on Twitter automatically becomes a link to all posts that have recently used that hashtag. Via hashtags, Tweeters can isolate tweets regarding a specific topic or discussion area.

Twitter hashtags by Search Engine People Blog, on Flickr

According to TweeSpeed, more than 80,000 tweets are sent per minute. That’s a lot of content to wade through. Searching by hashtag helps Twitter users zero in on the right tweets and cut Twitter noise and distractions. Often, communities and ongoing conversations are built around hashtags and understanding and engaging with these communities can help Twitter campaigns.

Ready to start adding hashtags to your tweets? Here are some tips to keep in mind when harnessing the power of Twitter hashtags.

1. Check hashtags before you use them. Search Twitter using your desired hashtags and follow the existing conversation. Is it the right audience and appropriate for your organization or campaign? Think of it as audience research; listen to how people are using the hashtag before jumping into the fray.
2. Search your message for hashtag opportunities. Sometimes you don’t have to add words in order to create a hashtag. Just use the words in your message strategically. Hashtags can appear at the end or within the message you’re sending. When you only have 140 characters, you need to make every character count.
3. Be selective and join the right conversations. Don’t go overboard and add lots of hashtags to your message. Evaluate the conversations and then pick the best ones to include in your Twitter message.
4. Highlight Twitter users in your message. Identifying Twitter user names in a message is like a hashtag that targets people instead of topics or subjects. People track conversations in Twitter by users’ names as well.
5. Spelling counts. Be responsive, but double-check what you send out before you click the “tweet” button. A spelling mistake in a hashtag puts your message in a different conversation.
6. Experiment with different hashtags for different results. After you identify some potential hashtags for your campaign, cycle the hashtags through varying messages and track results, such as click-thrus and retweets. Variation and monitoring results can help you focus in on the best hashtags to meet your campaign goals.
7. Check out your followers and other organizations’ favorite hashtags. See what hashtags Twitter users with similar messages  are using in their tweets. Perhaps another user or organizations created a conversation already that you can also benefit from joining.

If you’re looking for good hashtags to start communicating for #socialgood on #Twitter, check out this great flyer featuring 40 hashtags for #socialgood or read this great post by @Socialbrite regarding how #nonprofits can facilitate a #conversation using hashtags. You see, finding and creating #hashtags in your messages can be very #easy. You just start by adding the hash sign.

This guest blog post is by Leah Holmes-Bonilla, a Senior Account Supervisor and the Multicultural Services Manager at Vanguard Communications.

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes:

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is — “Let there be truth between us two forevermore.’”

Not so far off are beliefs and behaviors of Millennials as they continue to [...]]]>

This guest blog post is by Leah Holmes-Bonilla, a Senior Account Supervisor and the Multicultural Services Manager at Vanguard Communications.

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes:

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is — “Let there be truth between us two forevermore.’”

Not so far off are beliefs and behaviors of Millennials as they continue to grow older and continue to share.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project report and other technology experts:

The Millennial generation will lead society into a new world of personal disclosure and information-sharing using new media.  These experts said the communications patterns “digital natives” have already embraced through their use of social networking technology and other social technology tools will carry forward even as Millennials age, form families, and move up the economic ladder.

Rather than diminishing their interest and comfort in engaging in social media, Millennials will continue to share information.  This somewhat flies in the face of traditional beliefs that we grow more conservative with age.  This research suggests that Millennials continue to believe online sharing of personal information carries social benefits.  I see it as grounded in some fundamental trust in social media to build friendships, form and find communities, seek help and build reputations.

What does this tell us about Millennials into the future?  That they will continue to participate in social networking, and continue to avail themselves of new media technologies.  As present day and future communicators, we need to keep pace with this tech-savvy audience.  Remember that they trust in the medium, rendering it a great avenue for future communications.

Remember a few simple cues in your communications efforts: stay current with social media.  Understand that constant communication and flexibility in communicating are also important.  And finally, never be afraid to learn from your audience.

With Wednesday’s launch of Facebook Places (see this post by Chris Connelly to learn more about the new tool), many people were left wondering, “what will happen to foursquare?”

foursquare has been steadily increasing in popularity and its value has been explored in various  InSites blog posts (see thoughts from Brandi and Chris on the [...]]]>

With Wednesday’s launch of Facebook Places (see this post by Chris Connelly to learn more about the new tool), many people were left wondering, “what will happen to foursquare?”

foursquare has been steadily increasing in popularity and its value has been explored in various  InSites blog posts (see thoughts from Brandi and Chris on the application). Does this new development mean that the two-to-three million foursquare users will jump ship for Facebook Places?

Maybe not. According to foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, Thursday was foursquare’s “biggest day ever” for new user sign-ups. While the record number of sign-ups is a good sign for the company, will it survive against the almighty Facebook? This Mashable interview with Holger Luedorf, foursquare Vice President of Mobile and Partnerships, gives some insight into his thoughts on the launch of Facebook Places and what it means for foursquare.

Luedorf was optimistic, saying that Facebook Places would help to “validate the space” and show that this tool is “valuable.” He also noted that the value of foursquare is in the “gaming elements” and “checking history as a reminder of places you have been to.”  As Leudorf so nicely puts it, “it really remains to be seen how this is all going to work out, also how we are going to potentially integrate with Facebook moving forward so this could also be a great opportunity for us.”

His optimism for foursquare’s future is not shared by everyone.  In another Mashable article, the complicated relationship between Facebook and foursquare with the launch of Facebook Places is explored:

While Facebook (and probably Foursquare) will tout the social network’s entry into geolocation as a mutually beneficial move, the fact-of-the-matter is that the social network is probably giving Foursquare and its competitors no choice in the matter. It’s a “be assimilated or be destroyed” scenario for these checkin startups. With those kinds of options on the table, Foursquare never really had a choice in the first place.

While to many it could seem that Facebook Places will either destroy or envelop foursquare, I see Luedorf’s point in the video above that having a company as large and powerful as Facebook enter the market could validate the importance of the tool.  However, experiencing a record number of sign-ups after the launch of Facebook Places does not guarantee success for foursquare, because according to this article:

The surge in signups was probably due to the countless comparisons people are making between Facebook Places and Foursquare. With heightened media and user interest, it’s no wonder people are signing up to find out what this location thing is all about.

Even though this doesn’t mean victory for foursquare, it is an opportunity for the company to prove itself to its users. While it is true that the people signing up for foursquare yesterday were most likely doing so to compare the two services, foursquare has an opportunity to differentiate itself and its services and could continue its success.  According to Crowley, there is a difference. “Facebook is about sharing experiences that you’ve had,” Crowley says, “foursquare is more about the present tense and the future tense.”

What does this mean for communicators? Above all, don’t jump to Facebook Places and leave foursquare behind just yet. While it may be hard to suppress the urge to dive head first into the latest social networking tool, it is important to think strategically about which tool will help you reach the audience you are targeting and ultimately help you achieve your overall communications goal(s).  Right now, it is too soon to tell exactly how each service will be utilized — and even if they will ever be used by a mass audience at all.

As it remains to be seen what the differences are between foursquare and Facebook Places, take some time to see what will develop.  Using one tool over the other may mean the difference between reaching your audience and not. In the near future, we will start to see the two services differentiate themselves and it will be important to think about which service will fit best into your communication strategy — and more broadly, if location-based services fit in at all.

In the meantime, continue to “check-in” where your audience is!

On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out its long-awaited, location-based offering called Places.  Like competitors foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook Places allows users to “check-in” at locations, such as businesses, public spaces or even their homes, to broadcast to friends and connections where they are and what they’re doing.

We’ve previously discussed location-based advocacy in regard to foursquare [...]]]>

On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out its long-awaited, location-based offering called Places.  Like competitors foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook Places allows users to “check-in” at locations, such as businesses, public spaces or even their homes, to broadcast to friends and connections where they are and what they’re doing.

We’ve previously discussed location-based advocacy in regard to foursquare – but this announcement from Facebook ups the ante by bringing a half a billion people into the location-based check-in world.  Facebook’s reach among social network users ensures that more people will be checking in–for better or for worse.

Just as businesses are growing increasingly aware of potential benefits from check-in services, nonprofits and advocacy groups should be aware of how location-based social networking can help them.  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t be afraid to create a place and check in. Facebook has made it very easy to create a “Place” in their new service.  While the program aims to identify businesses or landmarks, there is nothing to say that you can’t just as easily create meeting spots, rally points, or strategically-located sites around key areas.  Trying to get a school board to pay attention?  Add your own “Places” around public schools or libraries with your message included.  Want to impact a member of Congress?  Ask supporters to check-in at their district offices using strategic messaging. Because all “Places” are public, other users will see these messages when they browse potential check-in spots.  The opportunities are limited only to your imagination.
• The benefits of location-based check-ins are immediacy and proximity. The business community has embraced check-in services, because it lets companies communicate with a customer at exactly the right moment–when they are in the business and ready to make a purchase. Advocates using check-in services should look to greet potential supporters with a call to action tied to where they are and what they’re doing.  Encourage passersby to join a nearby rally, or provide potential advocates with talking points, phone numbers and email addresses so they can take immediate action.
• Know your place. Advocacy groups and nonprofits now have new, virtual locations as part of Facebook Places, whether they like it or not.  Make sure you own your own, official Place that represents your organization, and monitor how people interact with it.  This can be your headquarters, offices or meeting points – but make sure you’re the one defining your Place.
• Location isn’t everything. Facebook Places is new and exciting, but it remains to be seen how it will be embraced.  Like any digital offering, use Places only as it makes sense to you–don’t let the buzz force you into rushed strategic decisions.  Keep your goal, audience and message in mind.

Keep an eye on Facebook Places to see how it develops.  It has tremendous potential for businesses and advocacy groups alike–but only if people embrace it.

Last week’s announced demise of Google Wave reminds us that effective execution and promotion are at least as important as a good idea.

I was one of the early Google Wave proponents who spent weeks desperately seeking a coveted invite into the exclusive community of initial users. I loved the idea of melding productivity and [...]]]>

Last week’s announced demise of Google Wave reminds us that effective execution and promotion are at least as important as a good idea.

I was one of the early Google Wave proponents who spent weeks desperately seeking a coveted invite into the exclusive community of initial users. I loved the idea of melding productivity and social networking tools into one tool on my desktop. I had visions of collaborating across clients and countries without need for tracking e-mail strings and endless versions of documents. When a colleague finally sent me an invite, I jumped on to what I imagined to be a virtual cruise ship filled with innovation and idea-sharing. What I found was a bunch of canoes paddling in circles. Forthwith are some lessons I’m taking away as we wave goodbye to Google Wave.

A good brand can lead a horse to water, but it can’t make him drink.  Google Wave initially benefited from the solid, yet innovative, Google brand. Few people understood exactly how the tool would change our lives, but we believed it would, because Google said so. I actually had more discussions with people about the tool in advance of its release than I did using the tool. The problem was that Google Wave seemed complicated and exclusive, exactly the opposite of Google’s friendly, accessible brand.

Stephanie Hannon of Google Wave | Photo From Flickr User niallkennedy

A whole bunch of people in the same place isn’t the same as a community.  Google Wave was seen as a collaborative tool that could streamline communication among communities. Yet, I found myself patching together a network of unlike-minded friends to even try out the tool. Google’s cautious approach to the roll out of the Wave served to discourage early adopters who wanted to dig in with their pals and see what was under the hood.

Keep promotion simple.  For those who were motivated, Google supplied many tools, tutorials and ideas for how Google Wave could change the way we work. Unfortunately, the tool had so much potential that it was hard to describe to friends and colleagues. Apple’s new iPhone OS has more than 100 new features, but they have focused on just one simple concept—the ability to conduct video calls with friends and family.

Know when to quit.  There are lots of good ideas, but only a fraction become real products and services. Google paid close attention to Wave, and they knew when the product had lost momentum and was putting their gold-plated brand at risk. It’s hard to give up when you’ve invested a lot of time, energy and emotion in a project, but it’s even more difficult to survive a long-term, widespread public failure.

This guest post is written by Shelby Benkert, an intern at Vanguard Communications.

Unlike most college students, I tend to shy away from many social media networks. Facebook is my go-to in order to stay in touch with my friends, and I rarely use anything else. I do have a Twitter account, but I have [...]]]>

This guest post is written by Shelby Benkert, an intern at Vanguard Communications.

Unlike most college students, I tend to shy away from many social media networks. Facebook is my go-to in order to stay in touch with my friends, and I rarely use anything else. I do have a Twitter account, but I have never tweeted. I’ve logged on only a handful of times just to check the profiles of the celebrities I am “following.” With the vast selection of social networking tools, I find myself reluctant to enter into a world where you are constantly connected. After reading an article about Foursquare usage written for Mediaite.com, I realize that my hesitation comes from the fact that I simply don’t want people knowing every aspect of my life.

From Flickr User Trucknroll

As a self-proclaimed “Facebook stalker,” I pride myself on being able to gather any and all information about someone just by viewing their profile. With features like “wall-to-walls,” tagged pictures, photo and wall comments, status updates, and the ever popular “Like” button, Facebook has become, now more than ever, a means of gathering information about someone. In five minutes you can find out somebody’s current location, schools they’ve attended, their place of work, and group of friends. Dig some more and you’ll know about their romantic relationships (both past and present), where they spent their spring break four years ago, and about their Cocker Spaniel named Sallie. And surprisingly, all this information is available about somebody you may not even be “friends” with.

While I think Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has come up with an innovative idea, Foursquare and other social networking sites must be used cautiously. Foursquare has expanded past where to go on a Saturday night to include which Starbucks you get your coffee at on a Monday morning, and where your weekly meeting is held on Wednesday afternoons. Indeed, see past InSites posts from Brandi Horton and Chris Connelly looking at the applications of Foursquare for advocacy work.  All this “checking-in” has lead me to ask the question, how much information is too much? And furthermore, how safe are you being when constantly updating your information?

Communicators should be aware of the privacy settings that exist on such social networks to understand what information people are, and are not, making available to the public.  What’s more, privacy concerns extend to organizational profiles as well as personal settings. We must learn how to use privacy settings appropriately in order to control what information we share on behalf of ourselves and our clients. The consequences of not using privacy settings appropriately are wide ranging. They can be as small as somebody learning how old you really are – or as big as being fired by a client for revealing sensitive information.

So, how do we keep these negative consequences from happening? Here are a few tips to keep you safe and avoid the thin line between staying connected and over-sharing information:

• Check your privacy settings – Make sure that your profile isn’t open for everyone to view and that the information you put up can only be seen by your “friends.”  If you work with a client on a social networking site, determine what privacy settings they will need in advance to meet their goals, serve their audiences, and deliver their messages.
• Be picky when it comes to choosing your friends – Have a plan for how you will deal with friend requests.   The ideal profile is one where you know all of your friends, that way you are not giving out information to people who you don’t know.  Personally, make sure you don’t just accept anyone who sends you a friend request.  For clients, make an advance decision on how you’ll deal with requests from supporters – there are times where you may not want to be associated with certain accounts, and you’ll want to know how to deal with this when the issue arises.
• Be careful with what information you put on your profile – Social networking sites save all your activities. Before putting something on a profile, make sure it is something you won’t mind others seeing today, tomorrow, or 15 years from now. Also keep in mind, employers also look at profiles.
• Limit your location-based status activity – When talking about where you are and where you’re going, be sure to avoid giving too much detail. You never know when a random friend request has fallen through the cracks, so don’t allow people the ability to trace your every move. This could lead to dangerous situations. You’d rather be safe than sorry!  What’s more, make sure location-based updates make sense for a client before activating these features on networks like Twitter or Google.  If you don’t have a need for a location-based feature, there isn’t a reason to use it.

Since it looks like Twitter is here to stay, public relations professionals need to learn how to effectively use Twitter and the myriad of tools that have been developed to help us navigate the microblogging network. To help, I pulled out the 10 apps that I thought would be most useful for PR pros [...]]]>

Since it looks like Twitter is here to stay, public relations professionals need to learn how to effectively use Twitter and the myriad of tools that have been developed to help us navigate the microblogging network. To help, I pulled out the 10 apps that I thought would be most useful for PR pros from the article, “105 Twitter Apps for PR Professionals”:

1. CoTweet allows multiple people to connect to and tweet from a single corporate Twitter account. This is one of two tools I am highlighting in this post that I have used. I found CoTweet to be extremely easy to use and valuable because when needed, you can schedule tweets far in advance (I scheduled two weeks of tweets at once) and you can see what the other CoTweet-ers are doing on the account.
2. Twiler allows you to receive email updates of tweets that contain the keyword(s) that you set up. Instead of constantly checking Twitter Search or TweetDeck (see #7) you can have the tweets you want to see sent directly to your email to view at your convenience.
3. TwitTrans is a service provided by OneHourTranslation.com that translates your tweet to any language using human translators for a small fee. You can translate your tweet to Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish. I’m assuming that the translation takes an hour, but that’s a lot faster than learning a second language!
4. ConnectTweet allows groups or organizations to combine the voices of its employees into a central Twitter account. With ConnectTweet, multiple people can contribute to the organization’s Twitter account by adding a hashtag to their company-related tweets coming from their personal account. ConnectTweet grabs the tweets containing the relevant hashtag and posts them to the organization’s Twitter page along with the individual’s Twitter handle.  This is a good way to avoid having a ghostwriter for your organization’s Twitter account (see my previous post: Ghostwriting for Social Media).
5. Twitpress automatically sends a tweet each time you update or add a new post to your blog. This helps you to promote your blog without having to remember to tweet about each new post you publish.
6. TwInbox, formerly known at OutTwit, integrates Twitter into Microsoft Outlook. This tool allows you to update your Twitter status, receive updates, archive, search and more all from Outlook. Simplifying Twitter and allowing you to have fewer items open on your computer?  Sign me up!
7. TweetDeck is a real-time browser that you can use on your desktop to connect your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more accounts that you monitor and use daily. The Integrated Media Services Group at Vanguard uses TweetDeck, and I have found it to be incredibly useful and organized. I can have multiple searches running for my clients at all times and can pull up TweetDeck to view these searches at my convenience.
8. TweetEffect allows you to see which tweet made people follow or unfollow you on Twitter. This could be a great tracking tool to see which messages and information are effective for your audience.
9. Twinfluence measures the combined influence of Twitterers and their followers to allow you to easily see which of your followers has the greatest influence on Twitter. Tracking success on Twitter is an ongoing question for PR professionals, and this may be a way to at least scratch the surface of this complicated question.
10. TweetBeep is similar to Twiler in that it sends you an email when your keyword(s) is mentioned on Twitter. The difference is that TweetBeep sends you an update every hour (which could be helpful or annoying depending on your personal preferences) and not only sends you information on people mentioning your keyword(s) but also who is tweeting your website or blog – even as a shorted URL!

What are your favorite Twitter apps?

Like a kid on her birthday, I always get excited about the release of the latest edition of the AP Stylebook. I love searching for new entries to find out how our use of language has evolved. In fact, I still have my very first wire-bound edition from journalism school, and it’s fun to [...]]]>

Like a kid on her birthday, I always get excited about the release of the latest edition of the AP Stylebook. I love searching for new entries to find out how our use of language has evolved. In fact, I still have my very first wire-bound edition from journalism school, and it’s fun to see how we referred to “new” technology, like fax machines, back then.

From Flickr User allaboutgeorge

Last week, AP released the 2010 version of its guidebook for journalists, and the changes are great conversation starters. Some highlights:

• Twitter and Facebook are capitalized, despite both social networking sites’ trendy use of lowercase logos.
• Web site is now website. Web master is now webmaster. Web page is still Web page. Uh, OK.
• The economic misery we’re all enduring is now known as the Great Recession.
• California roll is finally popular enough to earn its own entry.
• The movement known as the tea party made the book, but it didn’t rate capitalization.
• Unfriend is the  preferred way of describing someone’s virtual act of abandonment, but the less-used defriend is also acceptable.
• Definitions and usage rules for some terms are still a little fuzzy, and I expect to see updated–and clearer–entries in a later edition. Potentially specious references include social networking, social media, mashup, and liveblog.

Today I subscribed to the online version of AP Stylebook, which allows the user to enter notes and customize entries. I’ll miss the “new book” smell of a hard copy guide, but I’m excited about all those seconds I’ll save by not having to actually get up from my desk to grab it from the bookshelf.

The decision to start up a blog is not one that should be taken lightly. At Vanguard Communications, we had to consider whether our insights and commentary on communications issues would benefit the already robust public relations blog community. Since you’re reading this post on our blog, you know which way we decided, and [...]]]>

The decision to start up a blog is not one that should be taken lightly. At Vanguard Communications, we had to consider whether our insights and commentary on communications issues would benefit the already robust public relations blog community. Since you’re reading this post on our blog, you know which way we decided, and you can read more in Maria Rodriguez’s post about why we chose to launch it. There are many reasons to start a blog and countless benefits to your brand when you do. Here are a few less obvious reasons to consider blogging as a tool to boost your online communications efforts.

1. Blogs are flexible. Blogging give you a platform that allows you to communicate positions, opinions and ideas that may not fit neatly into your existing website.  You can react to news and events with commentary that frames an important issue for your company or organization, while not interrupting the normal flow of information on your website
2. Blogs are personal. Blogs allow members of your organization to write on the topics that they know best and care the most about in a voice that is their own.  This gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your organization’s personal ties and investment in the issues that drive your day to day business.  What’s more, it can show that you’re following ongoing updates in your field.  Giving the public a window into the minds of your employees can ultimately help your messages resonate.
   

   http://www.flickr.com/photos/kpwerker/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

3. Blogging helps with search engine optimization efforts. Search engine optimization (SEO, for you acronym-lovers) is a big, tricky industry that is built entirely on trying to figure out how to maximize returns from the algorithms that drive search results for Google, Yahoo, Bing and others.  Blogging, however, is a simple way to help increase your search standing.  It is basic math – if you have more content related to the core concepts of your website, more people will be able to find your website using search engines.  This can help drive more traffic to your website – not only to your blog, but to your core web properties.
4. Blogging builds communities. Yes, yes, I know – blogging is so 2003.  Shouldn’t I be talking about Twitter or foursquare or Gowalla or Facebook or [insert your favorite social networking outlet here]?  Sure, social networking may be all the rage these days, but don’t underestimate the power of a blog.  If you’re supplying good content, you’re developing a community of loyal readers that will share your message, champion your causes, and react when you ask something of them.  If you’re using social networking platforms, your blog provides valuable content that can help keep conversations going.

Before starting a blog, think strategically.  Like any other communications platform, decide who your audience is and develop materials accordingly.  You’ll need to provide regularly updated content that is valuable and interesting – but if you’re able to make this commitment, blogging can become an important asset in advancing your organization’s online efforts.