Susan Scrupski, one of the brightest (and nicest) people I've met in my Enterprise Web 2.0 adventures, recently became Chief of Applied Research at Austin-based BSG Alliance, which bills itself as "the total platform - from a strategic advisory, business process support, and technology design & deployment perspective - for Next Generation Enterprises, On Demand."
She and Nick Vitalardi had a conversation earlier this week about blogs, wikis and the rapid adoption of social media in enterprises during which Susan came up with the best list I've seen so far of how to be a successful blogger. Some are hers; others came from the collective wisdom of the web. If you're a blogger, have these tatooed to your wrist immediately:
• My number one message is, "To thine own self be true." Find your voice - be sincere. For corporate blogs specifically, number one on the list is never lie. From Robert Scoble to the Z-list blogger, all will agree.
• Two, write about your passion and write passionately. Whatever it is that you want to blog about, you have to really put your heart and soul into it or it won't be credible.
• Three, you really need to participate in the community. Blogging is not a solo activity (though that is probably one of the greatest myths about blogging). Linking and commenting are key to the experience of blogging and really taking flight in the blogosphere. Encourage comments.
• Four, try to be humble, but if you do have a strong point of view on something, bring it on, get it out there, but be prepared to defend your arguments.
• Five, when you reference other bloggers, you should mention them by name as opposed to just linking to them. This is blogger etiquette.
• Six, check your links. Bloggers are very forgiving, but definitely check your links. Also check your spelling and your grammar and probably in that order.
• Seven, don't ever edit or rewrite something that you wrote in the past. The common courtesy in blogging is to strike through and then rewrite on your blog post, if you have made an error.
• Eight, never delete posts. Never delete something that you've written. The rule of thumb in the blogosphere is that if you have committed something to digital ink, it's there for perpetuity and you can't go back.
• Nine, use a human voice, not PR speak.
• Ten, keep your posts regular and relatively short. The rule of thumb here is definitely less than 500 words and usually a lot less than that.
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