Live from BlogOrlando - Community Blogs

The Media Track got moved to an entirely different building and walked into highly relevant discussion about community blogs and blogger/editor etiquette.

Much of the discussion is about moderation. Looks like the Orlando Sentinel, a newspaper that has been offering community blogs for nine months, has not run into having to moderate entries that contain inappropriate content or content that contains affords commercial content.

Best Practices:
Establish a Vetting Process - Before allowing an individual to contribute to the community blog, ensure that the individual has been vetted. (criminal check, phone interview were some checks recommended)
Do Not Allow Use of Fake Names - This seems obvious but in general, we are more likely to post higher quality content when anonymous posting is not allowed.

Live from BlogOrlando - Adapt or Die

Media Track - First Session "All About Journalists Starting to Blog"

Key Take-Aways
1. Journalists have a difficult time getting readers too.
2. Post multiple times a day. Be consistent with your frequency of posts.
3. Every once in a while, write a "power graph" or something that you know will stir your audience to take a position.
4.To increase readership:
a. Find similar blogs, ask them to list on their blogroll.
b. Volunteer to do guest blog posts.
c. Do a Google blog search and contact those with similar topics and have them link to you.

Live from BlogOrlando

Made it here to Rollins College where the 2nd annual BlogOrlando is being held. This one day event has truly grown and tripled in the number of attendees to 280 this year.

Keynote Shel Israel's discussion on how social media is being used by others around the world particularly China makes our country's obsession with blogging, bloggers, etc seem terribly superficial. His tale about the harassment of Isaac Mao, a social media technology entrepreneur and somewhat of the dissident in China, by his government makes the pursuit of social media in that country seem that much purer.