1. HUBS FOR
COMMUNICATION AND
COLLABORATION:
BLOGS AND WIKIS
Danielle Mirliss, M.A., Ed.M.
November 23, 2013
Social Media Certificate
Seton Hall University

2. BLOGS
A web site that can be individually edited using just a
web browser

3. Web 2.0 and new social media has opened up many new sources for
communication and collaboration.

4. The Influencer Network Is Changing
Traditional Media
Trusted
Bloggers /
Twitters / Social
Connections
Industry
Analysts
Editors
Journalists /
Reporters
Media
Bloggers
Customers /
Consumers
Publishers
Advertisers
“Consumers turning to each other online is not a fad anymore. Companies opening up to customers
isn’t that different from the risks associated with doing business every day,” -- Forrester Research

5. Why Blog?
• Establish your
personal brand
• Enhance your career
• Establish/Strengthen
your SME credibility
• Expand your personal
network
• Improve your
communication skills

6. Why Blog?
• Attract an audience
• Inform and interact, learn from your audience
• Share news stories and detailed information
• Influence and educate others
• Retain your audience
• Understand the needs of customers and constituents
• Energize your audience and motivate action
• Refine key messages and selling points
• Sell more product
• Recruit help, contacts, employees
• Respond to stories and customers
• Clear up misconceptions in the market

7. Blog vs…
• Website – static pages of information or sales letters
• Newsletter – Information sent to inbox, drive action
• Forum – Conversation and interaction
Blogs combine elements of all of the above

8. http://blog.sironaconsulting.com/.a/6a00d8341c761a53ef0120a91f6818970b-800wi

9. Getting Started: Research
• Search for other bloggers
• Google blog advanced search options lets you fine tune your
search for the blogs that are specific to your topic area
• Technorati search is another tool to help you find relevant blogs
• IceRocket is a popular blog and social search tool
• Twithority can also help you identify influencers for your
topic area
• Search.twitter
• Social Bookmarking sites

10. Understand that being a blogger is similar to being a journalist who writes a
daily/weekly/monthly column in a newspaper or magazine
Activities include:
Researching topics to write about
Writing & posting updates to your blog
Reading blog posts by others and commenting there
Respond to comments posted on your blog
A good blog is one where posts are fresh and new posts are
frequent.
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11. What to Blog About
• Talk about topics you are:
• Comfortable with
• Happy to discuss with a wider audience
• Have knowledge of (unless asking for information)
Be prepared for responses

12. What to Blog About
• That conference you recently attended
• Product announcements
• Product feature previews
• A press release that was just issued
• An analyst report that ranks your company highly (or low)
• Your thoughts on an interesting blog post or article you just
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read
The customer visit you’re flying back from
A debate the product team is having on whether to include
feature A or feature B
What are you thinking about right now?
What will be important in your professional area 5 years from
now? 10 years from now?

13. Be a thought leader
• Share personal reflections,
perspectives and ideas on issues
and current events (be smart, but
be yourself).
• Have deep discussions on important
emerging trends.
• Connect with thought leaders -
engage in their blogs and
communities.
• Link to other thoughtful blogs in your
posts. Talk back and forth.
• Be provocative. Take a stand.
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14. Stickiness
• Images = Great Idea!
• Google Image Search and Flickr (http://flickr.com) – but pay
attention to reuse rights
• Videos = Yes!!
• Tags = Lots of tags help others find your blog entry
• Links = Lots of them, too
• The more you link to others, the more others will link to you
• Promote your company
• Use Surveys and Polls
• Formstack
• Polldaddy
• Contact

15. What should you not write about?
• Anything that can only be shared under a non-
disclosure agreement (NDA)
• Revenue or sales figures
•
Other than what is officially reported by your company
• Disclosing customer information
•
If they have not agreed to be a reference
• Making commitments about product futures
• Anything that goes against your company’s social
computing guidelines or business conduct guidelines
• Anything that you would not want to see reprinted on
the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

16. Some Additional Don’ts
• Don’t Me-Me-Me – It’s not all about you
• Don’t force it if it isn’t working
• Don’t over-sell – give first
• Don’t use business talk – and don’t assume
• Don’t try to control the conversation
• Don’t ignore your audience

17. Single Author vs. Multi-Author
Single Author Blog
•Personal connection
•Readers know what to expect
Multi Author Blog
•Random reading - variety of topics and writing styles
•Quality may vary between blog authors, but this approach
typically produces much more volume of posts than a single
author blog
•Readers may not connect with the writer
A better approach to setting up a Multi Author Blog is to setup a
Single Author Blog and to invite guest writers.

18. Additional Blogging Tips
• Write about what you know and what you truly care about
• Know your audience, talk about things they want to learn about,
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discuss and find valuable
Link when appropriate to other relevant blogs and materials
If you quote another blogger be sure to credit the creator
When commenting, always be transparent about your identity and
affiliation
Don’t be corporate or overly formal; strive for communication in a
natural and authentic tone
Take the time to know people you want to connect with by reading
their blogs
Start, build upon, contribute to discussions on topics of interest
amongst the other bloggers
There is no "off the record"; any communication with bloggers may
end up on their blogs
Follow your company’s Social Computing and Blogging Guidelines

19. BUILDING A BLOG
Planning is a key step to building an effective blog

20. Blogging Platforms
Blogger
WordPress
Tumblr
Free
Free
Free
Casual Blogging
Professional Blogging
Microblogger
Easy to Use
Complex
Easy to Use
Less Customizable
Customizable with
Coding
Many Stunning Themes
Free Domain Mapping
Domain Mapping with
Fee
Free Domain Mapping
Uses Google AdSense
for Monetization
Many plugins and
gadgets
Mobile Friendly Interface

21. Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org
• Wordpress.com
• Hosting platform that makes it easy for anyone to publish online
• Do not have to download software, pay for hosting, or manage a
web server
• Has hundreds of themes and includes the functionality of many
plug ins, but you cannot upload your own plugins or themes
• Wordpress.org
• free software that you can install on a web server
• Can install on a web server
• Can upload and install themes and plugins, run ads, and edit the
database.
One in every six web sites runs on WordPress, the most popular blogging
platform in the world

22. Anatomy of a Blog
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5504198659_5e75c4dcba.jpg

23. Posts vs Pages
Posts
Pages
• Entries listed in reverse
• Static and are not listed by
chronological order on the blog
home page or on the posts
page
• Sticky posts will appear before
the other posts.
• Can be found in the Archives,
Categories, Recent Posts, and
other widgets.
• Displayed in the RSS feed of
the blog.
date.
• Do not use tags or categories
• Can be displayed in the sidebar
using the Pages widget, and
some themes display pages in
tabs at the top of the blog.

24. Categories vs Tags

25. Creating a Post
http://blog.dakno.com/files/uploads/Anatomy_of_a_Real_Estate_Blog_Post.png

26. Adding Pictures and Media
• Can upload to the Media Library (3GB space)
• Add images using a URL
• Upload video directly to Wordpress using the VideoPress
upgrade ($60 per year per blog)
• Embed YouTube or Vimeo
• Copy and paste link directly into post
• Slideshare
• Special code for wordpress.com blogs
http://en.support.wordpress.com/slideshows/slideshare/
• Flickr
• http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/flickr-photos/
• Instagram
• http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/instagram/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/videos/

27. Social Network Integration:
Publicize
Publicize makes it easy to share your WordPress.com
posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Linkedin, and Yahoo!.
• To set up publicize on your WordPress.com blog please go to
Settings -> Sharing in your site Dashboard.
• Once you’ve approved a connection to any of the below services,
you’ll see a Publicize section in the Publish box on your post
writing screen each time you write a new post.
• If you want to opt out from any of the Publicize services for a
specific post, just click the Publicize Edit link. You can then
uncheck whichever services you want. You can also customize the
message that gets sent by typing it in to the Custom Message box.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/

28. Social Network Integration: Sharing
Sharing - At the bottom of each post and page you can now
include sharing buttons for your readers to share your
content across a range of social networks/services.
• Go to Settings -> Sharing page in your dashboard
• Buttons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit,
Pocket, and Digg may also be displayed in “Official” mode. Which
will display the number of shares in real-time on your blog, as
reported by the specific service.
• To configure which services you are using, simply drag and drop
them from the Available Services to the Enabled
Services section.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/sharing/

29. Links (Blog Roll)

30. Create a Page
• Used to present timeless information
• Organize and manage any content
• Examples include:
• About
• Contact
• Copyright
• Disclosure
• Company Information
• Accessibility Statement
• Cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be
assigned Tags
http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages

31. Setting Up a Menu
• If you have a theme that supports the Custom Menus
feature, you can create and arrange a group of navigation
links for your visitors to find the important parts of your
site faster.
• Creating a custom menu allows you to do the following
things:
• Change the order of pages in your menu, or delete them!
• Create nested sub-menus of links, sometimes referred to as “drop-
down” menus
• Create links to category pages allowing you to collect together
posts based on that category
• Add custom links to other sites, such as a link to your Twitter or
Instagram profile

32. Widgets
Widget is a fancy word for tools or content that you can
add, arrange, and remove from the sidebar(s) of your blog.
Widgets make it easy to customize the content of your
sidebar(s). You can access your widgets from the
Appearance → Widgets screen in your Dashboard.

33. Facebook Badge
• Visit the Facebook Profile Badges page, and select the
information you would like to display on your badge by
clicking Edit this badge and Save.
• http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/profilebadges.php
• Next, click Other to get your badge HTML code
• Add a badge to your blog sidebar
• Copy the HTML code and paste it into a text widget on your blog.

34. Design Considerations
• Choose from over 200 themes
• http://theme.wordpress.com/
• To change your theme, head to Appearance → Themes in your
site’s Dashboard
• Custom Header Image
• Go to Appearance -> Header in your blog’s dashboard. If you do
not see the option, this means that your current theme does not
support the use of a custom image header. Only .jpeg, .gif, and
.png files can be used.
• Flexible Headers
• If theme supports a flexible header, go to Appearance → Header
→ upload an image and click the “Skip Cropping, Publish Image
as Is” button. The header image will be added without any
cropping.

35. WIKIS
A web site that can be individually or collaboratively
edited using just a web browser

36. More on Wikis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

37. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/12/wikipedia-redesign-whats-in-store /

38. Wiki Features
Wikis are great collaboration tools because they:
•allow more than one person to edit each page.
•allow many people to add to and edit the same content.
•allow you to easily connect between pages inside the wiki.
Other great wiki features:
•expandable structure – you can add as many pages as you
need.
•NON-LINEAR - you can jump around easily from page to
page or section to section.
•allow folders as well as pages - great for more complex
projects with lots of sections.
•store FILES – upload .doc, .xls, .ppt, .jpg, etc.

39. Why Use a Wiki
• Project Management
• Tracking Industry News
• Setting Meeting Agendas
• Content Management System
• Posting Corporate Policies
• Creating Strategy Documents
• Technical Documentation

40. More Idea for Outside Community:
• Wikis are a great way to get patrons/colleagues to
participate in building a Web space
• Resource guides
• Conference
• Book reviews
• Area guides
• You can learn a lot from your patrons and colleagues!
Example:
http://prodinstres.pbworks.com/w/page/29501523/FrontPage

41. Wiki Options

42. Wiki Structure
• All wikis start off as a single blank page
• Pages are created and connected by hyperlinks
• No ownership of pages; anyone can change the work of
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others
Pages community members can add to or edit (example)
Discussion area for each page
List of all of the changes made to a particular page
(version control)
List of all changes made to all pages.

43. Wikis vs Blogs
Wikis
Blogs
• No one owns content
• A person owns their post
• No specific organization
• Organized in reverse
(hyperlinks)
• Anyone can edit other
people’s work
• Perpetual work in
progress
• Good for collaborative
group work
chron. order
• Only author can edit their
own work (others can
comment)
• Posts are permanent
• Good for disseminating
info/starting a dialogue

44. Why Not Wiki?
• Too open (trust issues)
• Concerns about ownership of content
• Disorganized
• Vandalism and spam
Wikis aren't for everyone. If control is a major issue with the
site you're developing, then a wiki may not be right for
your project.