Write Articles Not Blogs
July 11th, 2007 by Ed SingletonAn interesting article from Jakob Nielson on why you should write articles rather than blogs. He seems very dismissive of blogs (referring to them as “commodity content”), though he does admit that they have their place in selling cheap products.
Are blogs any more than that? Can businesses use them to generate a sense of community around their product or service?
I think there is a huge potential for small businesses to create communities around friendly blogs. Particularly with the rise of decent RSS aggregators and readers that help you to easily skip over content that you aren’t interested in.
July 11th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Interesting. I think these debates can get too immersed in the available technologies, ignoring the underlying need/problem things are addressing.
For example - I think blogs can serve as a diary-type tool - so the need is to record activity and thoughts - no matter how mundane or ill though through. They can serve as places to build arguments - the need being to challenge and develop your own thoughts. They can serve as places to document articles - but blogging doesn’t solve any particular need on this front that other technologies can’t. But also I think they crucially build communities - the need being to interact with a group of ‘like-minded’ people/people with some similar interest - blogs are great for this.
In workplaces I think their main uses should revolve around 1) efficient knowledge management and 2) conversations that aren’t strictly related to projects but i may be wrong.