Blogs & Wikis: Content with Purpose!
Wikis, blogs and other “convergence” technologies were recently discussed at an excellent
You obviously know what a blog is since you’re reading this screen! Understand new tech tools and templates make all this stuff easy. One of my veteran PR / media maven friends was tremendously impressed with my blog. She was blown away when I told her it was a Google http://www.blogger.com template! If I can build blogs—anyone can. The process is fantastically easy and fun. At this point, I have 10 blogs in development and more on the way to tie into various business and educational ventures.
With these seminars and personal study under my belt, I feel so smart! So, here’s a quick “wiki-blog recap” lesson for you.
What’s a wiki? Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian (a la Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia), offering quick access to original information. Do you have original insight or knowledge? That mean’s it’s time to build a Wikipedia page and get your message into cyberspace. Just make sure it isn’t blatantly promotional—or your entry won’t be accepted. Remember that a wiki piece isn’t your own personal not a blog, it’s monitored!
CNN and other media outlets even have full-time internet/blog reporters who track trends and monitor who’s saying what. As long as your info is credible and there’s attribution, you’re good to go. For a journalist-educator-entrepreneur like me, it’s a real winner. Get busy building your wikipedia pages and blogs; expand your fan base and readership. As a citizen journalist, you can easily share your philosophy and thoughts with the world.
Let’s move on to a new course, Blog 101: A blog is a running journal or log, that’s disseminated over the internet or world wide web … hence “web log” or “blog.” See, this stuff is easy. The trick to anything on the internet is specialization. There is so much info out there. As communicators, our goal is to organize material in a way people can easily retrieve it. Think Google and what they’ve done with the “vast sandbox” which is the internet.
Right now, convergence (of thought, technology) and integrated marketing communications are the buzz words. Further, there’s the process of integrated learning, via blogs, online courses/seminars/webinars. Think about how can repurpose information, refine the delivery for your audience and make money at the same time. In addition to being a wonderful informational tool, the internet represents capitalism at its finest. Add e-commerce and you can market/sell ways to make things simpler consumers, clients and audiences of all ages. Yes, a lot is free, but don’t negate the fact that folks will pay for information, if it’s creatively packaged and easy for them to retrieve and purchase.
For example, I’m working on a PR book – Grassroots to Global Public Relations: How to Excite, Inform and Influence Today’s
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