Strategic Communications Consultants

Managing the growing blog bog

Blogs are a nightmare for those in the public eye. Even though 99.99 % of posts are of no public moment, the  balance -- if they get legs -- can be hugely damaging for any organisation that relies on its reputation in the blogosphere for its survival.

The challenges include:

+ The huge amount of time wasted monitoring the 99.99% of posts that don't matter
+ Keeping track of the swarms of blogs that emerge, grow and fade by the day
+ Deciding whether to respond to negative posts
+ Keeping your own blogs and social networking sites updated

A couple of useful tools have been uncovered by blogger David Farrar:

+ A US Airforce flow chart advising on how (and whether) to respond to negative blog posts. He in turn picked it up from business adviser Jim Donovan's blog

+ Ping.fm is a utility that enables a blog/social networking manager to update numerous sites simultaneously. It will update 20 or more social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and various blog platforms without having to visit them individually.

- Trevor Walton