Blog 2.0
Blogs in the context of a social media landscape.
Peter Flaschner
Founder & Creative Director, The Blog Studio
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Super quick history
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‘90s blogs first appear
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2004 Blogs go
mainstream
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Around 2005
businesses began using
blogs.
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Businesses started
blogging to
communicate and
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to connect.
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New style of
communicating:
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Personal
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Transparent
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A more conversational
tone
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Why did blogs take off?
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Easy to update
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Built in sharing
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Very expandable
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Cheap to get started
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Low technical overhead
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Underlying all this
relative ease is
software.
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Blogging took off when
the software to
maintain and update
websites got easy.
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Blogger
WordPress
MovableType
TypePad
Drupal
Joomla
ExpressionEngine
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At this point in history,
“blog” can refer to two
things:
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1. A weblog.
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2. A platform.
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(By which I mean a site
powered by a content
management system.)
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Blog software has
evolved into robust,
stable, fast, content
management software.
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So, this brings us to the
social media ecosystem.
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Where do blogs fit?
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Traditionally (if we can
use that word) blogs
were a spoke in a
marketing plan.
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Out Micro-
Blog
door site
Corporate
POP Print
site
Face
Radio TV
book
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Increasingly, blogs are
becoming the hubs in
marketing campaigns.
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Micro- Linked
Twitter
site In
POP Blog Print
Face
Radio TV
book
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Why?
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Consumers want to get
a sense of a brand’s
character.
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A blog is possibly the
best place for that to
happen.
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1.
Increasingly, users have
a bunch of small
interactions with a
brand, spread over a
number of locations.
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Blogs offer a great
platform to tie those
experiences together.
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2.
Online behaviour has
changed.
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Users expect to have a
voice in their online
experience.
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3.
Blogs don’t have to
look like “blogs”.
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4.
Blogs have sharing and
communicating built
into their DNA.
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RSS feeds, commenting,
email-to-a-friend,
search, are all built in.
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5.
Usually optimized for
search engines.
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Tend to perform pretty
well on search results.
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6.
Most importantly, most
blog software is open
source.
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Rapid development
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Very up to date
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This high tech blog
software makes it
relatively easy to
aggregate an org’s
online activity.
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In other words, a
website built on blog
software can
AUTOMATICALLY
collate activity on a
bunch of different
platforms.
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Why is this aggregation
important?
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As orgs engage users in
new and different
spheres, it’s important
to collect (and share) a
full record.
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In other words, you
want your Facebook
fans and Twitter
followers to have
access to the same
content.
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Beyond aggregation
though, blogs have an
important place in the
social media ecosystem.
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They’re easy to update,
so they get used.
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Blogs in general have
become the norm.
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The White House has a
blog.
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Flexible look and feel.
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Relatively low cost to
create (relative to
enterprise CMS).
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Very measurable.
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I really believe the future of
business blogging is in
aggregating outside content
(Twitter, Facebook, etc) and
weaving together a
cohesive story.
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It makes sense to be
present in multiple
spots in the social
media ecosystem.
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Use a blog as your
home base and link
back from the spokes.
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Resources
• WordPress (www.wordpress.org)
• ExpressionEngine (www.expressionengine.com)
• The Blog Studio (www.theblogstudio.com)
• The Guide to Business Blogging
(www.theblogstudio.com/guide-to-business-
blogging-v2.pdf)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Peter Flaschner
peter@peterflaschner.com
twitter.com/flashlight
Tuesday, June 16, 2009