Blogs are an effective communication medium for both questions and answers. Many communications professionals look at blogs as simply another way to broadcast a message. While true, the dynamics of a blog induce a higher propensity for readers to provide candid feedback through comments or email addressed to the blog's author.

According to Sally Falkow, guest author for many of her client's blogs and a her own  - Website Content Strategy - "It's difficult to capture customer dialog and feedback through traditional Web sites, and much esier to do so with a blog because a blog is written by a person. It is this personal connection that compels customers to open up to deeper and richer dialogs."

Sally makes a good point - Web sites provide content about an entity known as a company; blogs provide content about a member of that entity. In fact, companies have started to recognize that each customer-facing employee could provide opportunities for richer dialogs with customers. Brief examples of this behavior include:

• Macromedia (60+ public blogs)
• Microsoft (1300+ public blogs)

Humor and irony abound concerning the emergence of blogs. Take this quote -

"The biggest fear is an uncontrolled message slipping out, said Steve Rubel, vice president for client services at CooperKatz & Company in New York, a public relations agency with clients including the Association of National Advertisers, J. P. Morgan Chase and Wendy's. "Do they allow comments or do they not? Is there an implication if it is a publicly traded firm? Who is the one who should blog for us? How might that choice be received in the company?" -- Linda Sawyer, managing partner and chief operating officer at Deutsch in New York

This is approximately the same argument companies had about Web sites in 1995, It's the same kind of fear exhibited in 1999 about instant messaging systems. History also points out similar worries about email, television, and even business adoption of the telephone. Sure, corporate entities must be careful, but they also need to adopt ideas when they make sense, and clearly, more meaningful dialog with customers makes sense.

In my view Weblogs don't ask enough questions. Imagine a blog that starts every post with a question. It then provides a little background on the question and a way to engage readers in the process of gathering answers. Imagine RSS feeds that exist for the sole purpose of polling good customers in near-real-time to get better market guidance.

Are blogs the new "survey" mechanism? Drop me a note - I'd like your opinion. ;-)

This is a topic that I have little knowledge about, although I sense that media room managers should leverage e-conferencing solutions to achieve some of their objectives. Citizens Conferencing is hosting a Web conference about e-conferencing - you can register here. Maybe this will help me understand how these numerous vendors differentiate their services.

It seems that every time one of our resellers or OEM customers invites me to present to a prospect, I get an invitation to use a new e-conferencing provider. This is problematic for those of us that present with partners; we have to learn how to use each one, and they're certainly different in terms of process, required component installs, required browser VM's, etc. Yesterday it was Unlimited Conferencing, last week it was Microsoft's acquired service [formerly] PlaceWare (now LiveMeeting). If you attend this seminar, make sure you ask about the technical requirements for both presenters and attendees.

With the emerging avalability of VoIP services and the ability to assemble ad-hoc services to produce your own radio broadcasts, television station, or other rich media production, the future looks great for media room managers that need to extend the reach of their message while leveraging this technology stack for near-zero cost.

I'll attend this seminar and give you my observations.

Imagine you wanted to be immediately informed about a specific company or subject. Here's how to do it:

1. Install an RSS newsreader.
2. Search for the company or subject of interest at All Headline News.
3. Right-click the orange XML button on the page and copy the "shortcut".
4. Open your RSS newsreader and paste the URL into a new news feed item.
5. Your RSS reader will inform you when new news items appear on that topic.

We call this "persistent search" because your news reader is always performing the search for you ij the background, and on a schedule you require. This is the perfect mechanism for creating custom business and market intelligence channels.

Blogs have started to become important to all sorts of companies for marketing and customer support purposes as well as media relations. A good example is Taylor Guitars Blog and ConferZone's ConferBlog. Most people believe a Blog must have lots of posts to be effective in gaining visibility and establishing solid customer dialog. I think it depends on the nature of the business and the objectives of the Blog. Blog proponents typically view the role of a Weblog in very narrow terms - either for business (i.e., a marketing role), or for personal use.

At MyST, many of our clients have found lots of use cases, but the point of this post is to suggest that Blogs can also include content items that are discovered on the Web and written into the Blogsite automatically.

There are ways to achieve this with some Blog tools through SOAP and XML-RPC interfaces. At MyST we do it with content automation tools - tightly controlled intelligence agents that look for relevant stories and articles. These agents collect and publish new items nightly in a series of "radar channels" and the benefits are quite impressive. They achieve higher search engine visibility and also provide new sources of RSS feeds that prospects and customers may subscribe to. These feeds may also be registered on syndication sites just like human-authored feeds, so the syndication reach and breadth can be extended.

A good example is BTI Communications Group radar channels. They have a half dozen channels that are updated nightly and provide topics that center of VoIP communications systems. 

The survey conducted by WordBiz also indicates that:

• 45% of you are unsure what to write about
• 18% question whether the content needs to be edited or pre-approved
• 15% wonder who would be responsible for the writing

If these are really your concerns, consider getting a PR professional - there are many that will write your Blog for you. Sally Falkow is a good example - give her a shout.