Darcy J. Greene MASC 671 February 21, 2009 Blog:Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World By: Hugh Hewitt.

Darcy J. Greene MASC 671

February 21, 2009

Blog:Understanding the Information ReformationThat’s Changing Your WorldBy: Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt

We Want More!

• Development of New Technologies

• What is Rathergate?

Blog Swarms & Opinion Storms

•“Don’t burry the lead! Lead with the lead!”

•What is a swarm?

•Swarming is carefully structured

•Strom Thurmond and Lott

Strom Thurmond & Trent Lott

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we would not have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Bloggers Call For a Change

Daniel Drezner- University of Chicago Law Professor and “uberblogger” called for Lott’s resignation two days later

Other bloggers jumped on the bandwagon shortly afterwards

Republican’s started to call for the resignation of their majority party leader.

How Did Blogs Start?

• The Evolution of “Text”

• Robert Vahn

• ARPANET- U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency

Types of Bloggers

• Uber-blogger

• Faith blogger

• Political Blogger (Polibloggers)

• Brand Bloggers

• Publicity Bloggers

Why Do Bloggers Blog?

• To Persuade*

• To leave a record of having been there*

• Satisfaction of having a limitless audience

• To inform

Credibility?

How credible are these random people? Are they random?

IT DEPENDS!!

Credible Bloggers

Name

Daily Kos

Glenn Reynolds

Atrios

Wonkette

Specialty

Technology/Army

Advanced Technology/Individual Liberty

Economist

Gossip

High Traffic, High Trust

National Review, The Corner, KerrySpot and David Frum’s Diary

- among the notable blogs with an enormous number of visitors and extremely high trust value.

• Ed Morrissey’s Captain Quarters and Polipundit were very famous in 2004

Traffic Tool

Blogs

PostsPopular

Count

The Power of the Tail

• David Sifry - Founder of Technorati

• Tail- 95 to 99 percent of blogs that are not traffic getters

• Low or medium traffic generators

• “The Virtual Symposium” – Hugh Hewitt

Your Organization & Blogs• If a blog swarm begins and your organization is unprepared…

• Establish a defense

• Get your employees and communication managers involved

•Establish your team

• Research your organization online

Defense Strategy

• Chain of Command

• Organization Policy on Blogs by Employees

•Transparency

Getting in Touch With Your Inner Blog• Leadership Blogging

-Eisner – Disney

•Management Blogging - You have goals to meet and outputs to measure

• Employee Blogging - Gather useful information

You, Your Product and Your Organization

• Demonstrate skill and thought

•Establish and defend a brand

• Market through blog ads

• Market through both paid media and earned media

• Network

•Find the blog that fits you, your product & organization

If It’s Appealing To You…

• Post often• Link freely• Be generous in praise and attribution•Don’t be long winded or too short• Profanity loses audiences• Avoid feud’s and flames• Keep the title short

• typepad.com, blogger.com and blogspot.com are your friends

How can organizations utilize blogs without participating in the swarms and opinion storms?

How can an organization

successfully control the flow of

information? How does your

organization handle this?

Should the mainstream media be threatened by bloggers?

How can they maintain a relationship if bloggers are now the editors?