Friday, December 04, 2009

SMBTV #4

I rolled myself out of bed early for the fourth Social Media Breakfast for Tech Valley. This meeting focused on blogging and coordinator Amy Mengel had as guests Lara Kulpa, Christina Gleason, Amanda Magee, and as moderator, All Over Albany's Greg Dahlmann.

My college's Communications Department sponsored the event (and they're hoping to host the next breakfast in their new media center in January) so a bunch of my colleagues were there. So was my pal Kim, who's becoming quite the media matrix herself and was indulgent of my less-than-wakeful state.

I'm not going to give you a summary: you can see the tweet stream here and get a good picture of it. The by-words for blogging remain the same: passion, responsiveness, content and the big one, community. The rules apply whether you're talking about a personal blog or a business one, something a lot of businesses still don't understand.

Ahead of time, I had put a question on the Facebook group asking whether blogging was needed anymore given the popularity of social media sources like Twitter and Facebook; of course, it was a bit of a leading question. Fortunately, the panelists all said the same thing I think, which is that the ephemeral nature of the more instantaneous lacks the stability of blog posts, which you can go back and find. Sure, there are Twitter aggregators, but the swift chunks of tweets don't add up to the same kind of experience.

But I've been thinking about the structure/planning issues. By default, Thursdays end up being BitchBuzz day; should I have themed days? Monday is movie day or Tuesday is beer day? What kind of topics should I cover regularly? How about a day for complaints? Everybody needs to complain. What if you had one day a week to just get a pet peeve off your chest? What do you think?

UPDATE: Local TV coverage of the event, as well as Humberto Martinez's article for the Times Union.

4 comments:

Todd Mason said...

It's a question only you can answer for yourself. I keep meaning to do more with my blog, but I simply don't have enough time, while trying to get to all I should do.

Patti Abbott, of course, is doing most of what she can to have theme days, and it can help boost engagement, I suspect, but some of her tropes are more like monthly.

C. Margery Kempe said...

I suppose. I always resist regimentation just by nature, but I know it has its uses.

The Queen said...

Oh, not complaining- too much of that going around already. You could do Beer Tuesday, but, you know, on the WLoADed site... :)

How about a blog a week about what inspired or disgusted you for the week? A Pro/Con thing....

C. Margery Kempe said...

You know, I really should have a WLoADed day every week. Synergy between blogs and all that, just as I do with BB. Hmmm, think it must be time to feature you on WLoADed! What with your new site and all...

Inspired or disgusted? Hmmm. Maybe it should be Inspired or soul-sucked!