My Thoughts on Blogging

With hope, and optimism I plunge forward into the new world of blogging. This is my very first personal blog but I have believed for some time that this technology could be a very useful in many ways. My initial impression of the technology and what I believe it's main intended use is for education, or to inform similar to a newspaper. But with one very important advantage, it allows the user to interact with the author of the article. Well just how useful is user feed back?

Entice Interaction
Notice the question at the end of the last section, according to flashnet on flashtesti, injecting your blog post with questions will entice interaction, (see the section on Blog commenting). That interaction it seems tends to be the goal of most successful blogs. Flashnet also points out that controversial postings can prove very successful in cultivating res ponces. I believe this to be very true; while I was in college I took many classes in which the professor would intentionally use a controversial topic to entice students to interact. The most masterful of all was my philosophy professor, who had a knack for taking a seemingly simple subject and building the class interaction to almost a fevered pitch. This technique in the case of my philosophy class was very successful, til this day I still remember some of those discussions.

Fear of Blogging
I suppose how controversial you want to get depends on the aim of the site, but I can see how this could be used. One thing I have notices when it comes to implementing company, or organizational type blogs is that many fear the technology. A company I worked for was afraid of negative comments that blog article might bring. As a result of that fear a blog site was never launched. But what management say as drawback, or liability, I saw as an opportunity.

Negative Comments
If you have customers that harbor negative thoughts about your company, service, or product you offer, how great would it be to have insight into those opinions. In an article in the Society of Leisure Enthusiast, it suggests that negative comments provide the opportunity to fix problems, and dispense unreasonable claims. This is not only good PR for a company, but it gives your company the change to let their customer service department shine. By putting your self out there and giving your customers a voice your really putting your money where your mouth is there by earning the respect of the people who keep you in business.

Boldly Go
The web can be a scary place and there certainly are hazards, but in my opinion what organizations and people should do is learn to deal with those hazards not hide from them. The positives to using this technology out weighs the negative. It all about perspective.