Tag: blogging

A late entry at the blogging ball (reprise)

BirthdayCake.wallgator.com_.wp-content.uploads.2014.01.Happy_.Birthday.Cupcake.Picture.Wallpape.Free_.Happy_.Birthday.Cake_A small milestone. I wrote my first ever blog post on this date in 2008, admittedly rather grudgingly.  The blog was set up as an assignment for a course I was doing and I had no expectations that it would last beyond the eight weeks-worth of content we needed to produce in order pass the module.  Even in 2008 the imminent demise of blogging was being forecast. Its death has been mourned on a regular basis ever since. But here we still are seven years later and I’m rather proud. So, this post is to mark the date, to thank Richard Bailey who made me set the thing up in the first place (he’s still blogging here), and to say thanks too to all the people who have commented on, followed or shared any of the things I’ve written about.  It’s nice to know you’re there.

 

Does blogging drive business?

Boozy lunch last weekend with an old friend who is just dipping a toe into online promotion for his construction business.  He’s getting his first website up and running soon and is thinking about a blog – though he’s not really sure why he might need one.  My answer to the question – so why have you got  a blog? –  may not have helped:

  • I enjoy writing it – especially now I’ve been writing for a while and there’s an archive of stuff to look back on.  I don’t feel as strongly about writing as Caitlin Moran, who confesses to salivating at the thought of sitting at the keyboard, but it’s definitely in my top five list of favourite things to do.
  • It acts as a shop window for me.  Part of what I offer clients is my ability as a copywriter, the blog lets them see me in action, writing on lots of different subjects.
  • It gives me a space to think.  It’s somewhere to gather advice and information about business and my particular sector, weight it up and tease issues into shape in my head through the process of writing about them (there are lots of posts which have been deleted unpublished because I realised half way through that I was barking up entirely the wrong tree).

I think having the blog helps my business enormously – although none of the reasons I do it are directly aimed at increasing turnover.  There are lots of other ways of driving business online.  I’m tempted to agree with whoever it was who said that if you blog you do it for yourself.  If anyone else reads it, it’s a bonus.

Press officers in an age of twitter

Great post here about whether (and if so, how) press officers within government should respond to stories/debates circulating among digital communities on blogs and via Twitter.  Inevitably there is real frustration about how slow press officers can be to react to the head of steam which can build up around key issues online before they hit the mainstream.  The argument that online inactivity damages departmental reputation must be right.  But it does misunderstand, I think, the key reality of a press officer’s life, which is that they must please their Minister.  On the whole Ministers still don’t get  this stuff and don’t believe that their constituents do either. Some of them blog, a couple are on Twitter (Ben Bradshaw and Harriet Harman, take a bow) But generally their key concern is tomorrow’s front page – in particular the front page of the Mail – or Newsnight, which is why so much activity is short term and reactive rather than designed to build relationships and alliances and deliver a long-term strategy.  Many press officers find this frustrating – although a frighteningly large number still don’t get it either. There’s a serious job to be done in some departments to educate press teams as well as policy leads on the possibilities.