Some more thoughts on blogging...and my new blog

Blogging being a journal means there should be regular posts. Mea culpa. With the many pressures of work and family, the update of a blog seems to go down in priority to everything else. (I should really practice what I preach.)

Last weekend, I attended a seminar on Internet Marketing. It was very similar to the one I attended last year. It was, after all, given by the same people--the Internet Marketing Center.

Mind you last year, the CEO, Derek Gehl gave the seminar, but the guy this year, Jason Bax, was also pretty good. Though, I liked the previous venue better. Telstra Stadium, compared to Syndey University, this year. (No offense to the university, but we had tables and chairs and more room in the previous venue.)

And, since the cost was minimal, they tried to sell their stuff. This I suppose is fair enough. But, again, I digress.

One session in that seminar dealt on blogging, RSS and podcasting. This was the principal reason I attended the seminar. Some new things were covered and this got me even more excited to put more effort in my blogging.

I admit that one reason I do blog is to practice what I preach. I do blogs for some clients and use the lessons learned from actually blogging myself.

I've wanted to be able to have a blog in my own domain, to give me more control than this free forum courtesy of Google. To the folks at Google, thanks and I will still continue using your service. Great job and I push this service to others.

Going back to my earlier plans of my own blog with my own domain. This journal will deal purely on marketing communication. In fact, I've sub-titled the blog: Exploring marketing communication for fun and profit.

If you want to take a peek, it's called messagefromgarcia.net. Yes, I know, pretty obvious and a bit corny. But, when I brainstormed some names this kept coming back with a good feel.

Unfortunately, the ".com" of messagefromgarcia was taken.

Good lesson there. If you have a name you like or want to use, register the domain straight away. Best to stick to .com or .net.

Anyway, again I digressed. I will have more stuff on blogging here and in my other site.

Hope to see you there...soon.

More thoughts on blogging

Admittedly, I'm a late adaptor of the blog. I've only been running this blog for just on a year. And, I must admit that I have only been posting sporadically over that period.

I want to share some nuggets I picked up in my readings concerning Blogs and Blogging.

"Blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpose, or delegate...blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite." (BusinessWeek)

Worth a thought, isn't it? Can anyone in business afford to disregard blogging?

Did you know that the word "blog" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003. It's been around for a while, but you know that something is mainstream when it makes the OED.

According to Nancy Flynn, founder of ePolicy Institute: "The blog is an electronic communications powerhouse that is likely to have greater impact on business communications and corporate reputations than e-mail, instant messageing and traditional marketing-oriented websites combined."

She nominated this as the first rule of blogs, in her book Blog Rules (AMACON, 2006).

These are just some random snippets that I gathered from the first part of the book, which deals with a case for strategic blogging. I'll have some more nuggets from this book and other sources in future posts.

Til my next post.

More on blogging, some definitions

In my calls to prospective and present clients, I've offered to set-up and maintain a blog for them as part of my service offering. I have encountered a number who have not heard of the term Blog.

Just for the record, let's get a few terms defined here.

Blog is short for web log, a journal of posts that is located on the worldwide web. Someone who keeps a blog is a blogger; the process of keeping a blog is blogging. The world of blogs is called the blogosphere, the act of putting up a blog on a blog is posting.

Wikipedia defines a blog as "a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order." The description of what a blog is goes further:

"Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media."

More of this definition/description can be accessed on Wikipedia's site,">click here.

And, of course, blog jargon has evolved to come up with other terms and acronyms. Take CBO for instance. You have CEOs, CFOs, COOs, but a CBO? Yes, you guessed it, Chief Blogging Officer.

It's another world I suppose. And, face it, it's not going to go away. On the contrary, I'm one of those that believes that it's here to stay.

What do you think?