Comments on: Blogging workshop & Anonymous Blogging

By: Philippe Borremans

Philippe Borremans — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:48:42 +0000

Hi Susan, congrats on your first workshop. Actually I just set up my own little company to do exactly the same here in Brussels, Belgium. The idea of a full day training wouldn’t work here in Belgium yet… Too long for a team of PR/Marketing people to be away from the office. I am going for a 4 hour workshop, covering the “theory” in one hour and then 3 hours of hands on work so they can create their own blog, zoom in on posting, comments, track-back etc… The one thing I am planning to use is a collaborative blogging system for them to create their blog on so that after the course there is still a sort of online community of ex-workshop participants. It will, I hope, allow for post workshop networking, sharing of experiences and for me, to follow them in their efforts. Would love to hear from you so we can exchange our experiences. All the best.

By: Susan Getgood

Susan Getgood — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:47:41 +0000

Thanks for the comment. It’s an interesting idea, but I am not sure we could define this so absolutely. Trust and credibility are determined by the reader, not by objective (or quasi-objective) third parties.

A reader can choose to trust an anonymous blog, and most certainly can be entertained by one. However, I think readers are more likely to trust “credited” blogs when it comes to important decisions.

What shoes to buy? Not so critical. Questions of health, finance, safety and so on. I think the readers want to know who you are.

In the case of my workshop client, the PR agency practices in an industry that requires high levels of trust. I recommended that they pretty much stay away from anonymity — for both the blogs with which they want to establish ongoing relationships, and any blogs they might do in future for clients.

By: J. H. Shewmaker

J. H. Shewmaker — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:20:10 +0000

Susan,

I realize that the question was unexpected and therefore the answer had to be impromptu, but if you think that these questions will keep coming up, I would recommend accumulating examples of 5 or 10 Great and BAD Anonymous blogs. The reason that I recommend this, is that I expect that once PR firms and traditional marketing companies appear, we are going to see a proliferation of fictional (such as Betty Crocker) and Character (such as Charlie Tuna) migration from the traditional to the blog world. If you give them examples of WHY certain anonymous blogs are successful and why others are catastrophic boomerangs, then they may be less likely to make the kind of mistakes that give the word “blog” a bad name in the minds of the less discriminatory. The world of blogging could suffer a credibility loss if we become inundated by untrained traditional PR people setting up Blogs for their clients.