Why would a business pass up a virtually free way to bring in new customers? Any business owner or executive should cringe at the thought of this, but research indicates that many are letting just such an opportunity pass by.

An interesting study was just published from a web hosting company in Britain. Even though the study is from Europe, the findings are very consistent with the experiences we’ve had here at RisingLine.  About half of the 2,300 small to medium businesses surveyed said they really liked the idea of using a blog on their site to increase traffic, but only about 3 percent actually plan on starting a blog in the near future.  This is odd behavior given the irrefutable evidence that consumers are increasingly flocking to consult blog sites before making purchase decisions. Blogs are no longer esoteric, they have grown to number 54 million (according to Technorati), with 75,000 new ones being created each day.

It really should be a no brainier. Blogs provide an easy method for businesses to develop rapport with their current clientele and create a like-minded online community that attracts prospects that are the most desirable clientele. Blogs allow non-technical business owners and executives to take control of their website without the assistance and delay of an IT professional, and to publish more authentic (and therefore believable) content for their site visitors.

Based on this study, it seems that a large percentage of business owners do realize the benefits…at least on some level, so the question is why is such a tiny percentage actually acting on the opportunity?  The survey showed exactly what we hear everyday…the business executive has no time to blog. Here are the three reasons why this exuse is not justifiable:

1. It doesn’t take that much time. You don’t have to write a polished article…in fact it’s often better not to. Just provide concise and valuable insight, maybe a comment on a news item, for your target client. Here’s how: keep up to date on the most relevant topics using Google Alerts, write a few sentences in your own words of why a certain news item is important, and post it.
2. You’ll Work smarter not harder. By spending 10 minutes each week to develop an online community of high value clients and prospects you’re ROTI (Return on Time Investment) can be exponentially higher than many other low-value activities you most likely engage in. You’re building a community of customer evangelists who will start driving highly qualified prospects to your business. Recycle 10 minutes of your time each week and blog! Set a reoccurring Outlook appointment to post to your blog the same time every week.
3. You’ll gain a better strategic perspective for managing your business.
   By taking a few minutes each week to watch the trends in your industry, you’ll keep on the cutting edge of your market, mature into a trusted advisor, and gain more credibility with your clientele…not just on your blog but in all your interactions with them.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve highlighted a few blogs that have succeeded in capturing the elements required for successful blogging – mainly developing content relevant to the customer or stakeholder.

Therefore, I thought I’d venture out to find the epitome of a poorly written blog. Needless to say, my venture was a short one as I quickly stumbled upon Hitachi Data Systems‘ ill-fated attempt at engaging the public.

As I meandered through Hu Yoshida’s blog, what caught my attention right off the bat was the content. Written purely from an executive perspective, I had a difficult time keeping myself awake while reading about Hitachi’s new storage widget or Yoshida’s traveling experiences in and out of Heathrow Airport. What Mr. Yoshida has failed to do is develop content that is meaningful to the audience. Frankly, I don’t know of too many individuals that would be compelled by Yoshida’s traveling experience. (yawn)

Compared to Ford’s Bold Moves site, which includes controversial commentary and passionate feedback, Hitachi has developed a site that is bland and uninspiring. My suggestion for Mr. Yoshida would be to drop the Hitachi-centric and personal traveling posts and concentrate on developing content that emotionally engages the audience. In other words, make me laugh, make me cry, or make me angry; just do something to compel me to contribute to contribute to your site. Unless the content improves, you can bet that Yoshida will shut down his blog within the next 12 to 16 months due to lack of interest.

If you’re reading this Mr. Yoshida, it would be great if you would contact me because your company has a compelling story and you’re on the right track with blogging. I’d love the opportunity to help you take this strategy to the next level by tailoring your content to address the emotions and needs of your target audience.

As you may be aware, the practice of business blogging has become quite the rage within the last year with the latest trend being the launching of corporate blogs by some very large commodity companies. With the hype machine being cranked on overdrive, some are assuming that anyone or anything that launches a business blog is really on the cutting edge of marketing. I am reminded of a key principles derived from evaluating what makes great companies in Jim Collins book Good to Great:

Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great. Technology can accelerate a transformation, but technology cannot cause a transformation.

The corporate blogs of Dell (Direct2Dell) Southwest (Nuts About Southwest), and McDonalds (Open for Discussion) are easy to pick as poster children for the above principle simply because these companies have not gone through
a radical transformation, nor will they be in my opinion. These companies represent the points furthest away on the economic spectrum from the types of businesses that have the most benefit potential from properly utilizing the technology of blogs. I’m not saying these companies should not have blogs, on the contrary. I’m actually a huge fan of all three because they have perfected the science of efficient production and mastered the fundamental elements of quality that people like Eliyahu Goldratt and Phillip Crosby popularized last century. It’s just that they won’t be taking center stage in this new business era.

When a hot technology trend like blogging takes off, it’s easy for anyone to jump on the bandwagon and give the impression that just because their blogging means that they are on the cutting edge of the new marketing world of the 21st century. I need to qualify my statements a bit as the technology of blogging can apply to the dissemination of many types of information. Blogging in its most basic definition is the technical ability to regularly post and broadcast through RSS alpha-numeric characters. How those characters are arranged or what relevance they might have to others is not part of this definition. Now as tempting as it is here to take a stab at everyone’s favorite corporate villain McDonalds and say, “visit the McDonald’s Blog for an example of this definition,” I’ll hold my tongue because I know that within the few weeks I will be drawn to one of their darkened storefronts at some odd hour to devour two (OK five!) of those highly processed hamburgers laced with some sort of addictive chemical that I secretly love so much.

Back to the topic, the reference to blogging that I am basing this post on is the revolutionary social movement that has always been there just waiting for the technology of blogging to emerge. To me blogging is not a technology, it’s the mindset of revolution.  The revolution that empowers individuals and segmented markets to communicate their needs, value, to validate their legitimacy through community collaboration, and then, when validated, to expand their message through organic word of mouth evangelism.

These mass market corporate blogs are not real revolutionary components to the social phenomenon of blogging. If we look to them as examples of how blogs will change business and society we’ll be missing the real thing. Blogging is the vehicle for dramatic and revolutionary change in creating a highly segmented marketplace—not a commodity marketplace like Dell, Southwest, and McDonalds represent—where needs can be communicated and met on an individual basis.  Blogs and related new media technology didn’t cause this, but they do play the vital role in providing an effective and low cost venue to facilitate communication and business transactions thus allowing mass segmentation instead of mass marketing. Our individual needs have always been there, they’ve just been subdued by mass standardization from the industrial revolution and mass marketing from the “information age”.

So the point of my gentle stab against Dell, Southwest, and McDonalds is just to highlight that the radical growth we’ll see in business and society going forward is on those highly segmented and specialized businesses, most of which will be much smaller than Dell, Southwest, and McDonalds. Some experts believe that the mass market commodity model of business will die out during the 21st century, the most well known book with this opinion is The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson. I believe that mass marketers will lose some market share from this revolution but will continue to succeed throughout the 21st century on a basic business model not radically different than what they have today…by being masters of discount commodity value. No one want’s to shop at Wal-Mart but we all do.

The real point is not whether Dell will be here in 20 years it’s that there is now the other market that has been opened up to compliment the commodity market. Now we can have our $500 notebook pc, take a $76 flight to Seattle, buy a $.79 hamburger at the airport McDonalds and enjoy participating in the highly segmented new media marketplace for those needs we choose to go there with.

I know that Southwest Airlines isn’t for everyone, especially those who love to be pampered by high dollar airline perks like microwaved frozen chicken and stale rice served in an aluminum box complete with plastic utensils. As for me, I’m perfectly fine with honey-roasted peanuts complemented by an ice cold ginger ale … and that’s why Southwest.com is typically the first Web site I frequent when preparing a domestic flight itinerary.

Okay, some of you who frequent this blog are probably thinking I’m a hypocrite because I’m promoting a company that could easily be described as the Wal Mart of the airline industry due to their commoditized approach. However, I’d argue that Southwest is a different type of company than a commoditized retailer such as Wal-Mart in the fact that value is provided to me personally through customized services such as SWAvacations.com and a frequent flyer program that even a traveling novice like me can understand. To top everything off, as a valued customer, I’ve been asked by Southwest Airlines to engage with the company through their blog.

Although BlogSouthwest.com started out as a simple extension of the company’s marketing rhetoric, the content has improved dramatically over the past few months. Brian Lusk and the crew have started to focus the stories on the emotions of their customer base. In fact, of all the corporate blogs that I’ve visited, I’d have to say Southwest’s is the best in terms of capturing my emotions through docuvideos on subjects covering post September 11th traveling fears to eloquently describing cool vacations ideas in places like Seattle. Whether in a positive or negative sense, travel is an emotional subject for most people, and Southwest has done a terrific job at understanding issues that travelers face.

Please visit Southwest’s blog site and let me know if you agree.

For all of my love and devotion to the Apple brand, it bewilders me that the company isn’t blogging effectively and is even being shown up by the enemy who has created and pro actively maintains a phenomenal Mac-centric blog. Oh sure, there’s been a few feeble attempts like the .mac blog, but it’s pretty much ignored because it’s simply a forum to talk about product features and violates some of the basic essentials to building an effective blog. How could it be that an organization that prides itself on being at the forefront of quality customer-centric technology has been beaten at its own game? Great question.

To provide a little background, I’ve been a Mac user for 5 years now and I initially made the switch because I was forced to through my job. In fact, I once thought of Mac users as strange professor types that lived in virtual compounds and spoke weird utterances common to cults. Begrudgingly, I began to use my desktop G4 and it wasn’t long before I came to realize the value of the product … it actually was performing at a quality level as testified by all those whacko Apple heads.

Lo and behold, 5 years later I’m typing away on my PowerBook G4 and dreaming about my future upgrade to a MacBookPro while at the same time scheming how to get my business partner, friends, family, and acquaintances to make the switch. Yeah, I’ve gone out on a limb by trying to reveal to them how they’re actually living under the blue screen bondage of a beast that sucks the creative lobe right out of their brains. However, I have to confess that approach has been met with less than desirable results.

So as I sit here musing, I can’t help but wonder if the dynamic and charismatic figure who started my little Mac cult would be more effective than me in swaying popular opinion by addressing the blogosphere in a way similar to how he approaches the WWDC. If there is anyone who can sell Apple, it’s our man Steve, I’m sure the guy even convinced Bill Gates to buy an iPod the last time they got together to discuss compatibility issues.

Along with opening the value discussion up to the PC slaves … err, users, through blogging, Mac evangelists would also love to hear what Steve Jobs has to say in regards to the future of the company as well as trends and developments that effect the industry. I for one desire to hear directly from Jobs on issues relating to Leopard, the rumored wireless iPod, and future compatibility/integration developments with the Intel processor.

It really surprises me how Steve Jobs is missing a grand opportunity to engage with Apple’s loyal and evangelical customer base by choosing not to blog. The company obviously sees some potential in blogging technology since they’ve integrated it into the iLife suite. So why not use the technology and have Jobs or other Apple personalities, like Guy Kawasaki for example, to come online and lead the most powerful marketing force in the personal computer market today? – ahem, that being us Mac evangelists.

In conclusion, the energy Apple heads like myself expend toward selling the product to friends, family, and acquaintances should be harnessed and exploited by the company so as to further endure its customers to the brand while increasing market share by exposing the company to potential switch candidates through the blogosphere. In all, we evangelists want to hear from Apple execs and we’ll do all we can to bring others on board as well.

If you’re an Apple user or one of those other types like my PC partner Doug, please let me know whether agree or disagree with my premise.

The Premise

As businesses slowly discover the blogosphere and the benefits and repercussions that come along with it, too many marketing managers are simply applying the principals and practices learned in Advertising 101 and/or sales training seminars to construct their blogging strategies. In other words, I have noticed several blogs on corporate Web sites that have been written in a manner similar to what one would find on a product description page. This is in fact a significant blunder in blog creation because it dilutes the true purpose of a blog; which is to organically engage with people in meaningful and purpose driven dialog. The fact is, consumers don’t read blogs because they’re interested in hearing a sales pitch, but rather they desire to scratch beneath the surface so as to discover the degree of actual value a product, service, or brand may provide to them personally.

How to Write a Blog

In actuality, there is no set formula or templated prescription for writing a successful blog other than to keep the content real and relevant for the reader. The content should be structured so as to capture the emotions of the reader/consumer and in a manner to solicit feedback. In many cases, this strategy goes beyond product-centric content and taps into the lifestyle of the audience; creating a customer-centric forum that harnesses emotions and develops a level of interest with significant impact for the reader.

Taking this customer-centric theme a little deeper, Ford Motor Company used to spend millions of dollars to scream at the general public about torque, towing capacity and horsepower, now they have redirected that energy toward engaging the folks who actually use, or who are contemplating using, their product through what they’ve branded as “Bold Moves.” Although Bold Moves has come under a great deal of scrutiny by some business analysts and media pundits, the concept strikes right at the heart of what today’s consumers are looking for: transparency in marketing. If you compare Bold Moves’ commentary response compared to other business blogs, you’ll find that readers are responding with passionate, informative, and respectful dialog. For instance, CLICK HERE to read a commentary on alternative fuel sources.

In addition to soliciting feedback from customers and relevant stakeholders, Ford has implemented a mechanism that allows readers to pass the information along to others so as to increase the pool of contributors. From my own observations, the result of the pass along mechanism has kept the content of the site fresh and engaging.

In summarizing the elements required to produce a successful blog, remember to:

– Develop content that is beyond the scope of your product

– Emotionally engage the target audience by talking about values, lifestyles, and subjects that keep people awake at night

– Ask for honest feedback

– Develop a mechanism to pass the blog along to other readers

How to Promote a Blog

The pass along mechanism should provide a great precursor into how to promote a blog … namely through viral methods. Although Ford has been advertising Bold Moves on commercials, a good amount of buzz has been created through non-traditional methods such as word-of-mouth via other blogs, public relations, media commentary, and personal engagement with customers – inviting them to visit the Bold Moves site. In fact, the very reason I’m writing about Bold Moves is because of the buzz generated from their non-traditional methods. I was not compelled to visit their site as a result of their television commercials.

Truth be told, successful blogs really don’t require a major media blitz to create a following if they are constructed around relevant content, as mentioned above, and if they incorporate a technological infrastructure to support a loyal following. For instance, RSS integration is a tool that is designed to build traffic to a blog site while encouraging repeat visits through a syndication method that is non-intrusive. In other words, RSS doesn’t clog up email and it helps the audience discriminate relevant information from spam through keywords and descriptions. Practically every page within Bold Moves is equipped with an RSS subscription module. Combining pass along mechanisms, non-traditional buzz, public relations, and RSS has helped Bold Moves develop into a customer-centric forum with a significant amount of traffic and passionate commentary that should intrigue most consumers in the market for a new car.

The Benefits of Blogging

Cutting through all the complex definitions of blogging, the most direct description is that of an online forum for authors to post comments and/or questions so as to solicit feedback. For businesses, blogging should not be viewed as an extension of an advertising campaign, but rather a medium to connect with customers and stakeholders. Companies that utilize blogs effectively will discover that their audience is more than willing to provide constructive feedback, in some cases eliminating the need for focus group style market research.

Additionally, blogs provide consumers with content they can search out for themselves, without having to rely solely on corporate-generated commentary. As a consumer, I appreciate the opportunity to view reader responses to corporate-generated content since it allows me the opportunity to experience the product/service from a peer’s perspective. For instance, if I’m preparing to make a purchasing decision, I as a consumer want to be well informed of the value that I would possibly receive from others that have bought before me. This is a great lead in for some common objections companies hold toward blogging.

The Objections

In my experience as a consultant, the two most common blogging objections that I run into include 1) the risk of negative feedback and 2) the lack of time. Starting with the negative feedback dilemma, companies must come to grips with the fact that not everyone can be overwhelmingly satisfied; and whether marketing managers like to hear it or not, the conversation about their company’s products and services is already taking place amongst consumers. Blogging simply provides an avenue for sellers to participate in the discussion.

To overcome this first objection, any company of worth will have loyal customer evangelists who are willing to extol the company’s virtues and provide testimonials via an online forum if provided the opportunity to do so. For companies wondering how to accomplish this feat, the key is in identifying those customer evangelists and inviting them to participate in the online discussion, similar to what Ford has accomplished through Bold Moves. Although Ford certainly has its share of detractors, it also has a large network of customers who will willingly go to bat for the company so as to defend it from critics. If a company is unable to identify any customer evangelists, that organization is in serious need of evaluating their customer service program because they probably won’t be doing business 5 years from now.

To address the second objection, time is always a factor in business operations, one of the critical resources that is severely limited and often leads to the downfall of organizations that are unable to manage it wisely. However, blogging shouldn’t be viewed along the same lines as a company picnic or corporate birthday celebration, but as a critical component of customer relations. Without a doubt, blogging requires a significant commitment, however the burden of blog management can be mitigated through a smart and comprehensive strategy involving multi-blogger participation, strategic content parameters, and scheduled posting dates. For instance, my partner Doug Case and I both blog, he writes on Thursdays and I contribute on Mondays. We agree that our content can be as many as 10 printed pages or as short as a single paragraph. Finally, we both view blogging as a fun exercise, an opportunity to share our opinions and experiences with other people. Our strategy may not work for everyone, but the point is to develop an infrastructure that will work within corporate time constraints and encourage proactive participation.

The Conclusion

In all, blogging is merely a tool that companies should leverage to envelop customers into brand loyalty and evangelism. If thought of as an extension of traditional advertising, the blog will ultimately fail because there will be a disconnect between the corporate message and the expectations of the reader. To succeed, keep the content real and customer-centric, and remember to implement technical mechanisms such as RSS or pass along links to broaden participation.

YOUR FEEDBACK is appreciated, please reply to this blog with any questions or comments.

As I was visiting some relatives in Finland last month, I noticed that very few Nordic Web sites had incorporated blogging and New Media features at a corporate level. Blogging and podcasting have already become commonplace amongst the general population in Finland, as it has in the United States, however there is a glaring gap between most corporate Web sites and available New Media technology.

Something inherent about the Finnish society is that people adapt to technology very quickly. In fact, it is a country where you find youth text messaging live television talk show hosts from their mobile/cell phones although they’re being charged to do so. Finns, and I’m supposing other Europeans, would most likely embrace companies or organizations that would open up the level of transparency in regards to products, services, and community. For instance, Nokia is Finland’s most influential consumer brand, of which people proudly show off their new model phones amongst friends and family, along the same level as a car, home, or other status symbols. So as to exploit and enhance this brand power, I could certainly envision Nokia providing an interactive community where its customers could go online to chat about new product features, designs, like and dislikes, desires for future technology and so forth. Not only would this create further intimacy amongst Nokia’s customer base, but also it would enhance customer evangelism while at the same time providing in-depth and basically free unsolicited market research. Plus, Nokia has already experimented with the blogosphere by sending bloggers new phone models and had phenomenal response; why shouldn’t Nokia then take blogging to the next level and engage their customers? Nokia also has a few non-employed enthusiasts blogging about their products, the next step would be to envelop this community within the Nokia.com sphere to help shape the content and engage in the discussion.

So as to prove this isn’t a Nokia centric blog, Fazer, Finnair, Hesburger, and Stockmann are four other Finnish companies that come to mind that could leverage new media technology and customer evangelism. In fact, no matter the firm or industry, the main ingredient for success is to identify a loyal customer base and empower enthusiastic individuals with tools like blogs and customer reviews so as to become a participative marketing and sales extension for little to no cost. Although this may appear somewhat iffy in terms of ethics, the truth is that most customer evangelists don’t want to be bought, they’ll proactively solicit the virtues of a company’s products and services simply because they feel an inherent personal emotional identification around the brand. In other words, the brand becomes a reflection on their personality.

In conclusion, I’d like to reiterate the old mantra to those of you who haven’t heard it before … great brands create consumer evangelists by empowering their customers to be a strategic marketing force. Companies that have succeeded, such as Apple Computers, Under Armour, and Southwest Airlines, know what makes their customers tick. If you’re a marketer reading this blog, I highly encourage you to check out some articles under Google keyword search using “Customer Evangelism.” One article in particular that I would recommend is the “Customer Evangelism Manifesto” by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba; it has honestly revolutionized our corporate drive at RisingLine New Media Marketing. Anyway, I hope this blog provided some helpful information. Please feel free to provide feedback or ask questions.

As RisingLine continues its blitzkrieg effort to mainstream New Media marketing, I thought it would be important to pause and ponder why some blogs never seem to take off. Okay, I’ll confess, I’ve only been consulting in this field for about a year and a half, but in that time I’ve noticed distinct characteristics that separate blogs that succeed verses blogs that fail … and no, the analysis doesn’t equate to rocket science but simple marketing fundamentals.

First off, blogging can be compared to retail in terms of generating “foot traffic.” For instance, many people venture into retailing because they’re passionate about a product or service and they assume that others will be as well. So they’ll lease a storefront, flip the sign on the front door to read “Open,” and wait for the customers to rush in and buy their goods. However, what separates a successful retailer from a bankrupt retailer is the realization that rewards are derived from hard work, quality, attention to detail, and evolving a passion to match the market need. Retailers can even spend a significant portion of their budget to advertise their product or service, but if they haven’t addressed these variables, they’ll never generate interest nor will they develop a loyal following. And yes, these same principals apply to blogging.

So why do so many blogs fail? In my estimation, I’d narrow it down to these 5 reasons:

CONSISTENCY – The blogger has failed to consistently develop content on a regular schedule; which in turn leaves whatever viewer he or she has previously attracted clueless as to when updates or newsworthy items will appear on the blog. Although many business owners say they don’t have the time to blog consistently, they need to change their perception of the blogging function and recognize it as a legitimate portion of their sales and marketing activities.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL – Although our society has significantly lowered its standards on grammar and spelling, both are still important to develop readable and discernible content. Many bloggers, myself included, have a tendency to become lazy while forgetting simple procedures that could dramatically improve the readability of posts (e.g. proofreading).

RELEVANCE – Just because a blogger may have a passion for nude para sailing, that activity doesn’t necessarily equate to like minded interest within the public at large. Similar to the retailer example above, a blogger must evolve their passion to address a market need. One unfortunate characteristic of our culture is that people are too busy in general to be interested in the passions of others; what they desire is content that emotionally engages them and equates to their own interests. This isn’t to say that bloggers can’t structure a message to endear their passions to others, but merely a warning to keep the interests of the audience in mind. In fact, regardless of the subject matter, successful blogs capture the emotions of an audience by making them laugh, cry, ponder, or get angry. Even nude para sailing could become a relevant blogging topic if the subject matter is able to emotionally engage the reader.

AESTHETICS – No matter the content, people in general still appreciate a well-designed layout for a Web page that is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. By maintaining a well designed Web page, bloggers are able to enhance credibility and improve the viral component of their distribution – because who really wants to refer a terrible looking Web site to a friend or professional acquaintance?

MARKETING – Probably the most significant contributor to the failure of blogs is the lack of appropriate marketing. Again, going back to the retailer example, one cannot simply flip the sign on the front door to read “Open” and expect customers to pour in. Generating blog traffic will take effort; the content must be distributed out to a targeted group of readers in order to generate interest. Thankfully, utilizing technologies such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and viral components such as a “Send This to a Friend” link are all viable methods to help generate interest in a particular blog. Additionally, as horrible as this may sound, bloggers should incorporate some MLM tactics into marketing their blog – such as encouraging their immediate sphere of contacts (family, friends, neighbors, work contacts, etc.) to read their content and spread it along. If a blog contains the prior 4 elements listed above, it will generate interest if marketed properly.

These 5 points address important but forgotten aspects that could easily improve stagnate blog traffic. Plus, if you’re still reading this blog, it’s only because I have incorporated each of these variables into my blogging strategy.

As RisingLine continues help the blogosphere grow in acceptance with mainstream organizations, such as corporations and government institutions, I began pondering why our elected officials are not taking advantage of blogging technology. For instance, since elected representatives are typically engaging in dialog with their constituents from a reactive perspective, why not make it proactive? I am familiar with this segment because I used to work in a United States Senator’s office as an intern and I was responsible for fielding inquiries from the public. I quickly learned that most inbound communication to our office was in the form of complaints or grievances against the government or our representative.

That being said, I believe blogging presents a great opportunity for our elected officials since transparency in politics is becoming a huge issue. Statistics from most polling organizations reveal the public at large does not trust the government. In fact, many voters view professional politicians as crooked, greedy, or disengaged – although this might not always be the case, perceptions are critical in politics.

Bringing this back to New Media, blogs are a way for elected representatives, or their staff, to actively engage with constituents via a transparent media. Although there may be fear in opening up a Pandora’s box filled with disinformation, the content within a blog can certainly be contained within a set of content and technological parameters. For instance, should disingenuous visitors post false information or lewd content, the false information can be quickly responded to by either another constituent, or a staffer, and lewd content can be deleted by a site administrator. Plus, with internal prompts, RSS, and XML technology, representatives and staffers can easily keep on top of what is being posted on their blog site.

Finally, from a personal perspective, I would sincerely appreciate the opportunity to respond to and dialog with my elected official to let them know my opinions on issues that they have commented or voted on – such as abortion, taxation, property rights, education, government spending, foreign affairs, etc. I certainly don’t believe that I’m alone in this opinion, since most people I chat with about politics feel the same way. Also, if you’re an elected official or a staffer who is reading this blog, I encourage you to perform a Google search on political blogs to view the energy out there amongst those who desire more transparency in government.

It’s no secret that one of the primary reasons for low voter turnout in the United States is that voters, especially younger voters, feel no connection with their representatives or candidates. Yet these people are voicing their frustrations and concerns online through blogs. I’d like to point out that the conversations about elected officials and politics are already taking place, blogging will afford elected officals the opportunity to participate if they’re willing. For a great example of an elected official utilizing blog technology, I invite you to visit the Anthony A. Williams’ blog. It might be an eye opener.

You’ve probably heard by now the new buzzwords like blog, XML, syndication, RSS, CMS, and wikis. You may have even clicked on some site’s little orange XML or RSS button only to have a screen full of code thrown in your face.

It’s ironic that these less than intuitive acronyms and geek birthed tags give many people the impression of added complexity to the Internet. These new terms actually represent a paradigm shift in the Internet in the opposite direction – towards providing ease of use, and most importantly, usefulness to the average Joe or Jolene-not just geeks.

Secret Meanings Revealed

So what do all these terms that help define this new generation of the Internet commonly referred to as “Web 2.0″ really mean to you?

They mean that you now have the ability to provide the internet community a web site or web publication that:

• Always has current and relevant content.
• Facilitates two-way interaction with your audience
• Responds intelligently to visitors actions
• Is easy to manage without a technical expert or expensive software
• Becomes a platform for exponentially expanding your client base

Compare these features to the ubiquitous old school web site that is often full of stale information, offers only one way communication, is non-responsive, and requires software and/or technical expertise to update…and ultimately is of limited value to its owner and the web community as a whole.

In case you’re still curious about more specifics, here are some brief definitions of terms associated with Web 2.0:

Web 2.0: A general term emphasizing the evolution of the Web to an environment of real time communication, collaboration, and community.

Content Management System, CMS, Web Edit: A web site that allows a non-technical user to easily publish text, photos, and links by logging into to a database and adding the information from the Web in an intuitive word processor like interface. The information is then instantly updated on the web site.

Blog (Shortened name for web-log): A type of CMS system (see above) that is intended for periodical publication of information, such as commentary, or news. The unique identifiers of a blog from general CMS include the automatic archiving of articles/posts, the syndication of the posts through XML (see definition below), and the ability for visitors to post their own thoughts or comments.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language): A widely used and versatile protocol for encoding information and sharing it between diverse applications.

RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication): An XML based broadcast of a web site’s selected content. RSS enable content becomes syndicated, available for subscription and display on other web sites or RSS news readers.

RSS Feed: Refers to the originating source of information published through RSS. Comparable to the broadcasting tower of a TV station.

RSS Readers: Utilities that allow RSS feeds to be converted and displayed on web pages or in news feed aggregators (software that displays RSS feeds). Comparable to TV set displaying the broadcast of a TV station.

For more definitions associated with Web 2.0 see our Web 2.0 FAQs.