Introduction to Business Blogging

Instructors: Mini-Course

Charlie O’Donnell 1.5 credit hours

Best reached by e-mail (24/7): Meets: 8:PM-10PM Monday

charlie.odonnell@gmail.com Classroom:

Office hours:By appointment

Course Overview

Intro - For Week 1

Finding Blogs, Types - For Week 2

Why blog? - For Week 3

Creating your own, best practices - For Week 4

Corporate/legal issues - Final Project Outlines Due

Blog Blow-ups and Project Reviews - For Week 6

Advanced Tools - For Week 7

Final Project

Weblogs, commonly referred to as blogs, have been around for several years, but have recently grown in recognition as a force business professionals and their employers cannot afford to ignore. For business professionals, they are an invaluable source of real-time information and commentary, as well as a tool for self-promotion. For companies, they are becoming an essential tool for managing information, knowledge, and relationships.

This hands-on 7 week mini-course will answer all your essential questions about blogs and their implications for business communication, management, marketing and technology. Students will learn how to use blogs to find relevant content, as well as create blogs of their own—learning the do’s and don’t of successful blogging. Topics include how blogs can be a career development tool for individuals and how companies are using them as a means to connect with employees, customers, and potential customers. We will discuss how a company can track what’s being discussed about it in the “Blogosphere” that could affect business performance and why it might want it’s own blog.

Part of the course will also involve creating a blog on your own—one that covers either your career, your industry in general, or this class and your learning experience. You will also be responsible for a blog strategy proposal for a business or non-profit institution at the end of the course.

Required Materials: Required readings for this class will be provided online.

Throughout the course, regular readings will be assigned week by week. Students will have the added responsibility of reading blogs and blog posts as they come out, since this is a real-time medium. In the first class, a system for passing blog links from the instructor to the class and between students will be established; New content will be discussed at the beginning of each subsequent class.

Grading

There is ample evidence that college students learn more and retain more when they are actively involved in the learning process. In this course we depend heavily on you to help make class time interesting and informative. This means an emphasis on your attendance and active involvement in class discussion and projects.

Grades will be based on the following:

1) In-class communication and participation

Attendance is important. Missing class rules out your opportunity to contribute your ideas and insights, lowering the quality of the discussion for those of us who attend, and consequently, lowers your grade.

2) Each student will be responsible for creating their own blog on one of the following topics:

Review of business blogging developments and reflection on class topics

Blogging on your own personal career development

Blogging on your industry and current trends

The goal for each student’s blog will be to create a platform by which they 1) demonstrate their knowledge of the medium and its potential, 2) use the medium to foster interaction with either other classmates as well as others on the web with shared interests 3) reference and comment on current related online conversations from other bloggers and 4) demonstrate a high level of professionalism in their blogging behavior. There will be some element of peer review in the class and the level at which that will influence your grade will be determined as the course progresses.

3) Blog strategy proposal

Each student will be responsible for turning in a written proposal for a business or any other entity (non-profit, school, club, professional society) that makes a business case for a blog, and its potential benefits. It should also, at a high level, discuss the strategy for the content of the blog and the particular approach and theme of the blog.

The Big List

What are blogs

History

Stats

Differences between a blog and a non-blog website

How to find blogs

Reading

What is RSS and how do you use it?

How to subscribe to the blogs of others

Creating your own blog

Instructions for students to create their own blog

Purpose: to document what they have learned about

Classwork and things they are learning about blogging

Their career

Commentary on their industry

Discussion of do’s and don’ts for good blogging

Why blog?

Blogging as a career development tool

Tool to promote a message

Tool to generate feedback

Buzz marketing

Blogging as a piece of a larger online and offline persona

The Ego Economy – What I want, when I want it

What if everyone blogs?

Review of significant “Blogstorms”

Understanding how news gains momentum

Rathergate & The Election

Kryptonite locks

The “Fired” Bloggers

When the online world has offline repercussions

The Blogging Elite

Why do some blogs catch on more than others?

Whose word counts?

How can you tell if content is accurate, legitimate?

Offline reputations vs. online reputations? Which is easier to start with?

Corporations respond

Examination of good corporate blogging

Individuals from corporations

Official corporate blogs

How does giving the masses a soapbox change PR & Marketing?

Can corporations take advantage of the “viral” nature of blogs?

Blogger bias & corporate sponsorship vs. independence and the uncontrolled message

Content networks: Weblogs, Inc., Gawker

Platforms: Six Apart, WordPress

Tools: FeedBurner

RSS Aggregators: Feed Demon, Bloglines

Blogging as a Distribution Model

Ad Sense

Indeed.com

Amazon.com

Search and tagging

del.icio.us

flickr

The future of blogging

Blogging as a Business Model in Itself