blogging for business

12 Jan 2006

Just got back from the NCT’s Blogging for Business roundtable. I thought it was pretty good overall. Rex gave a good intro to what blogs are and how it all works, Brittney gave an overview of her experiences with blogging, ascension to the throne at nashvilleistalking.com, and WKRN’s strategy in that respect. Nick Bradbury followed with an intro to RSS and his software and how all that stuff works.

I was pleased by how the tone set was one that described blogging as a community and conversational process, which is something I definitely agree with.

Some joker in the back at some point asked a question (I am paraphrasing, I can’t remember his exact words) how we “can keep anyone from just saying anything, or slandering”. Then he won a door prize. There’s no justice.

Comment-spam as a topic came up several times, during the roundtable discussion, as well as while mingling. With the tools out there these days, there’s really no reason to be putting up with comment-spam. I’d encourage anyone having a serious problem to do a few things:

1. Move your blog to a platform that supports more advanced comment-spam prevention methods. This would include pretty much any of the bigger blogging services (Livejournal, WordPress, Typepad, etc.) or just using software that include this functionality or support plugins that do (Movable Type, WordPress, etc.).
2. If you’re using WordPress, I’d encourage you to check out WordVerify, the little anti-spam plugin I wrote for WordPress. It’s proven remarkably effective for me so far. Though, it won’t defeat spamming that utilizes a human element, a topic that Rex brought up. Though that seems to be pretty rare at this stage.</ul>