Blog Comment Guidelines

This blog entry was posted on December 10, 2007.

As you begin blog marketing, you will receive comments from your readers. After all, many times the most interesting content comes from the comments. Some comments will be relevant and helpful while others will be plain junk. Establishing guidelines will help keep your blog free of comment spam and inappropriate language.

Setting up guidelines on how you will respond and what types of comments are acceptable will make decisions easier. Here is an example of a comment policy that you are free to use or modify:

Comment Policy
We welcome your comments to our blog. To keep our blog focused and to protect you and other users of the site, we have set some comment guidelines.

1. This Blog is moderated and comments submitted will be reviewed before being posted. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments.
2. Comment spam will be immediately deleted. This includes comments that are focused on selling a product or service or are not relevant to the posting. We do not allow marketing messages of any kind.
3. Please keep your comments brief and on topic. Comments longer than 1-2 paragraphs make the blog difficult to use. We reserve the right to edit to make comments concise and clear. We will exclude comments not related to the subject.
4. Relevant links that point to your own or someone else’s site that is relevant to the topic is encouraged. Comments with a link in it that has no relevance to the blog posting will be deleted.
5. Please refrain from personal attacks or being disrespectful of others. Do not use profanities or other offensive or objectionable words. Comments may be deleted or edited that include such language.
6. Please post only your own work and do not post words or materials that were taken from somewher else. Do not infringe on the copyright rights of others.
7. Please respect people’s privacy. Do not share anyone’s address, place of employment, telephone number or email address.
8. Comments that appear to violate laws that govern use of copyrights, trade secrets, etc, will be deleted. We reserve the right not to publish allegations, conspiracy theories and other information which we know to be false or unsubstantiated.
9. If you are under 18, please get a parent’s or guardian’s permission before posting any comments.

Comment guidelines make blogging, moderating comments and responding easier on yourself and your readers. There are no surprises and all parties know what to expect. The tone and wording of a comment policy should match your blog.

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What is FeedBurner?

This blog entry was posted on December 8, 2007.

FeedBurner is a true web 2.0 service that makes it easy for any visitor to subscribe to a blog feed regardless of which feed reader or news reader they prefer to use. It is a service that takes normal RSS or Atom feeds and turns (burns) them into a feed that can then distributed to readers for use in any RSS reader. It simplifies the RSS Feed.

Sometimes called a feed enhancer, FeedBurner takes your feed and adds more functionality to it without you having to modify it yourself. FeedBurner also allows your readers to subscribe via email. Published feeds are modified in several ways, including automatic links to Digg and del.icio.us, and “splicing” information from multiple feeds.

You will also be able to easily activate “Feed Flares” which are third party developer programs that add more functionality to your feed. Popular “Feed Flares” include:

1. Google Bookmark This
2. Bookmark With Yahoo! Bookmarks
3. Submit item to Kontrib
4. Rate Me On Authorati
5. Track with co.mments
6. My Digg Counts
7. Alexa Rank
8. Blog This
9. Add to Technorati Favorites
10. Find Related Feeds

FeedBurner was acquired by Google in June 2007. Google continues to expand into the Web 2.0 world of blogging with companies like Blogger, FeedBurner and Measure Map (blog visitor statistics). Measure Map technology has been integrated into Google Analytics.

We add FeedBurner to every blog site we produce because it definitely drives more repeat visitors back to your blog. Feedburner is an important tool in business blog marketing.

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Fired For Blogging

This blog entry was posted on December 6, 2007.

Blogging provides an easy way to publish information of all types to a worldwide audience. If that writing involves information considered sensitive by employers, employees are feeling the consequences.

It is less about being fired for blogging and more about disclosing sensitive information in a public forum that is getting employees into trouble. Bloggers write about their lives, discuss hobbies and talk about their work. But complaining about co-workers, disclosing confidential information or posting inappropriate pictures have gotten bloggers fired in recent years.

Heather Armstrong
In 2002, Heather Armstrong, a Web designer was fired for writing satirical accounts of her work including coworkers on her blog titled Dooce. This is the source of the term “Dooced” which means to be fired because of comments made by an employee on a personal blog.

Ellen Simonetti
Ellen Simonetti was a Delta Airlines flight attendant who was fired for “inappropriate pictures in uniform on the Web.” Ellen apparently posted photographs of herself on her blog in her Delta Air Lines uniform aboard a company airplane. One photo apparently showed the 30-year-old with her Delta uniform blouse partially unbuttoned and was deemed suggestive.

Mark Jen
Mark Jen is a former Google employee was fired for making comments on financial performance and future Google products on his blog. Apparently in he candidly criticized Google on a variety of subjects including their intranet, his work laptop and his compensation.

Michael Hanscom
In 2003 Michael Hanscom, a Microsoft contractor, lost his job after he took some pictures of Apple G5 computers being unloaded onto the software company’s campus and posted them to his blog. Apparently Microsoft has a “no camera” rule on campus.

Blogging is a very public forum and divulging something about your employer can spell trouble at work.

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Free Copyright Licensing: Creative Commons

This blog entry was posted on December 4, 2007.

A Creative Commons license allows authors / creators of writings, art and music to place conditions on the use of copyright works by others. The license amends your Copyright with the permission for others to use your work in certain ways. They can choose restrictions they wish to assign to their works, all of this free of charge. The intention is to avoid the problems created by current copyright laws.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization launched in 2001 by lawyers, intellectual property experts and web publishers. The Creative Commons website allows holders of copyright to clearly mark their work with icons that mark the work with Some Rights Reserved or No Rights Reserved. Creative works are set free for certain uses.

Creative Commons has a variety of licenses that allow copyright holders the ability to grant some or all rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes. They supply digital documents in both plain English and legal wording. Digital codes are supplied to embed in websites according to the type of license.

Licenses are in 6 major types of licenses plus a public domain dedication. They vary between allowing commercial and non commercial sharing as well as rights to change and remix the work.

Currently Google, Yahoo have Creative Commons search for content on the web which is reusable or modifiable. You can search for photos, music, text, books, educational material, and more. Yahoo now offers a Creative Commons Search API which can be worked into web applications.

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Blog Marketing: Blogger vs. WordPress.org

This blog entry was posted on December 2, 2007.

For business blog marketing should you use Blogger, the Google hosted product or WordPress.org? Blogger and WordPress.org are the two leading blogging platforms in use today for blogging.

Over and over I talk with bloggers that started with Blogger because it is free and easy to set-up. Then they realize the limitations and need to convert to the self-hosted version of WordPress. The WordPress.org product in our opinion is a much better product for business applications because it can be customized to give better blog marketing results.

WordPress.org should not be confused with WordPress.com which is a hosted version similar to Blogger.

Blogger
Blogger is owned by Google and it is free. It is an excellent tool for the beginner. Hosting is done on blogspot.com.

Advantages

1. It is free.
2. Set-up is easy and quick. No coding knowledge required.
3. Pre-installed themes, templates, plugins and widgets.
4. Software is updated automatically for you.
5. Built-in spam controls.

Disadvantages

1. Limited control and limited ability to customize.
2. Design choices limited making it difficult to achieve a distinct look.
3. Code produced is not valid W3C valid code.
4. “No Follow” cannot be removed from comments.
5. Lacks categories to organize posts. Uses labels instead.

WordPress.org
Wordpress.org is the free open source blogging platform that you download and run on your own hosting account.

Advantages

1. You can completely control and customize blog functionality.
2. Ability to organize posts by category.
3. WordPress is built following W3C code standards.
4. Large library of plug-ins available to add functionality.
5. Multiple user security levels

Disadvantages

1. Set-up and customization is more complex.
2. Longer learning curve because of available options.
3. Requires setting up a hosting account.
4. Requires a separate domain name.
5. Tech support is available thru forums and wikis.

Our recommendation for blog marketing is strongly for WordPress.org. Hundreds of independent developers regularly produce new plug-ins and customizations making this the most versatile and best performing blogging platform available. For the beginning Blogger, is easier and quicker to set-up and is a better choice for the “tech-challenged.”

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