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There was a panel discussion in Nashville today about business blogging. I am aware that this is beyond cliche, but I am blogging the panel discussion (thought only pseudo-live because there was not wireless).

The panel was made up of:

• Rex Hammock - President of Hammock Publishing
• Brittney Gilbert - WKRN Nashville is Talking blogger
• Nick Bradbury - Creator of FeedDemon

The discussion started with each panelist giving a brief presentation.

Rex Hammock
Very fast overview of blogging, platforms, why people blog, etc.
Rex is a "magazine guy". Hammock Publishing published many magazines. He is also a "blog guy" for the past 4 years. He spent alot of time trying to explain blogging to print publishers.

People are not bloggging about politics, news, or gossip. Most people blog to improve writing or for thereputic reasons. He then mentioned the Cluetrain (highly recommends) (I agree). "blogging is about love", connecting with others.

what is a blog? A very simple content management system. It is very simple. It is too early for dogmas or "blog police". Blogs are not a style of writing. blog are not a format. blogs do not have to be snarky, opinionated, etc.

blogs have to be:

• passionate
• reverse chronological
• permalink
• time context is published
• must have outgoing links (link to what you are talking about)
• RSS feed (use the universal icon!)
• blogs must have transparency
• search
• tags / taxonomy
• FAQ, contact, etc
• human voice, personality, style, point of view
• comments (not always true)
• blogroll
• archives

The popular platforms are: MovableType (TypePad is their hosted service), LiveJournal (also a movable type company), Blogger (owned by Google), WordPress (open source) Note: WordPress also powers the CentreSource blog, MicroSoft and AOL also have offerings.

There are also blog like things that do not post text. This would include social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us. this would also include photo sharing services like Flickr. business are using Flickr to publish pictures of their products. There is also GoogleBase. Walgreens has uploaded their inventory (and store locations) to GoogleBase.

blogs are not going away (though the term blogger may go away). He sees blogging to be like email (I agree). "The DNA of blogging will be seen in future generations of all digital media". especially MS Vista. RSS will be integrated into Vista.

Brittney Gilbert
No slides because she is low-tech. This is funny because she has a pretty technically advanced job. Had aspirations of being a writer. did some freelancing after college, but her style wasn't getting picked up by newspapers. Found diaryland.com (this was 1999, no permalinks, no comments). It was a personal storytelling blog. She would write about going to the store and meeting people or tending bar, etc. audience continued to grow until it was really popular. Was more surprised when she got the phone call from Mike seacrest from News2. He had been reading he personal blog.

She thought News2 would want part-time or volunteer blogging, but they offered her a full-time job because they wanted to jump in feet first. This was because they recognized that the younger viewers were getting their news other ways. see Cluetrain above.

They wanted a blog that was not stale. That wanted it to be authentic. 1 person with a clear bias. No veil of objectivity. this was a different way for WKRN to disseminate information. She is not republishing stories from the air. She is tasked with finding blogs by people in Middle Tn. she reads several hundred Nashville area blogs each day.

NashvilleIsTalking also has an aggregator that highlights the blogs that she reads automatically. she then also blogs about what she reads. NashvilleIsTalking also gives them a way to listen to their viewers, and has been a way for MSM to integrate with the blogosphere

blogs give everyone a voice and allow WKRN to start listening to their critics and their viewers. that was the primary goal of the site (well, and internet advertising, but there aren't any ads yet).

NiT has also given WKRN a pool of contacts who are knowledgable on all kinds of topics that WKRN may be doing stories on. blogging is a tool for publishing that facilitates two-way communication.

Establishing NashvilleIsTalking has given WKRN more credibility with bloggers. they don't censor bloggers (even in the aggregator). People are typically kind, but more than that they respect that fact that WKRN has given them the opportunity to voice their oppinion. Companies should trust their bloggers.

WKRN has also gotten great story ideas from NiT. the News director can ask Brittney what people in Nashville are talking about and thus they are able to give stories that people want. WKRN has also gotten alot of press by early adopters and bloggers for being willing to take the risk.

If you wanted to do a blog without comments you would probably get some flack, but that is probably the #1 thing that is keeping businesses from jumping into the blogosphere. However, the two-way communication can help build the relationship with your customers (and between your customers if you do community building).

Nick Bradbury
Nick started his career as a struggling cartoonist. He then started self publishing on the web. He build HomeSite as a tool to publish he cartoons (HomeSite was more successful than his cartoons).

Started with a opt-in email list. Fewer emails are reaching their target so he started a blog. to entice them to keep coming back he gave cool links too. by opening comments up on his blog and making himself available he was able to get great new feature ideas. His blog became more important than his site. Created RSS reader to keep up with blogs

RSS allows you to subscribe to a site and see when something changes. he demonstrated using an aggregator by subscribing to CNN using FeedDemon. A few years ago most sites that published RSS were for geeks. Now all the major news companies provide RSS and Apple and Microsoft are integrating it into everything.

by offering an RSS feed you provide a way for your customers to find out more about your products. you also get the oppportunuity to ffind out more about your customers. You can also subscribe to searchs using RSS to find out when people are talking about your company (vanity searches for companies). demonstrates by searching for WalMart.

Your choice is not whether or not to give your customers a voice, but rather or not you want to listen to them. Last year Kryptonite had a PR disaster because they did not listen to what was being said about them on the web. They may have been able to avert a disaster by listening on the web.

Only scratches the surface of what RSS enables

Q: what about ATOM and XML? You should not have buttons on your site. you should only have one. He is suggesting that RSS is that one standard to have.

Q: What are the differences between feedDemon and NewsGator? NewsGator has a web-based product. they also have a plugin for Ms Outlook and FeedDemon as client applications. If you use Outlook use that, if you want more power, use FeedDemon, etc. They all are able to stay in sync.

Q: How as a blogger do you integrate a tool for posting blogs as well as reading blog? He doesn't have that feature on his laptop, but FeedDemon can do that.