According to Steele, blogs are fast becoming the PR and marketing tool of choice for savvy companies who want to generate buzz for their product or service. He drew examples from Gawker Media's extensive network of popular blogs to illustrate some of the positives and pitfalls in corporate blogging.
Here are Steele's Do's and Don'ts of Blogging:
DO
- Be brief
- Use your own "voice"
- Be spontaneous
- Link to other blogs
- Link to other web content
- Comment on other peoples' blogs
- Post pictures
- Update frequently
- Be edgy, interesting and entertaining
- Use common sense when deciding whether or not to post information that might be sensitive, defamatory, inflammatory, in poor taste or just plain illegal
DON'T
- Over edit
- Attempt to publicize your blog by sending an entire entry in a mass e-mail
- Ramble on for paragraphs without providing links to other information
- Let your blog languish for weeks without posting
I promise to start following his guidelines soon...
Steele and his Gawker colleagues are featured in an article about blogging in today's New York Times. See it here.
