Responding to Blogs

If anything shows the changing nature of communications jobs, it’s the strategic decisions related to responding to blogs. Today, I had pretty much planned my day around writing and projects, but I got sucked into responding in the blogosphere which makes me think on a few lessons.

1. Not all blogs are created equal. Today, I wrote a response to a post at MN Lawyer. I haven’t responded to a number of other posts on other blog sites on this same topic. However, the audience reached by MN Lawyer is just too important for us to ignore. Additionally, I have always found the dialogue on the MN Lawyer blog to be relatively respectful and the editors tend to get involved when something goes too far off the track. I’m not sure I ever made thought of this before today, but there is a separation even between the “good” blogs and the “bad” ones and we can’t chase them all, but we better be chasing a few.

2. Good news is viral, which means so are mistakes. The other part of my day was spent chasing down some news that appeared good but the data was wrong. By the time I submitted a posting saying, “Sorry, the wrong data was submitted” two prominent blogs and probably others had trumpeted the news. Thus, I had to correct the facts as many places as possible meaning the damage was tripled because we couldn’t fix the problem fast enough to get ahead of other bloggers. On the flip side, in the old days of print we wouldn’t have been able to get in front of it at all.

3. Responding to blogs requires trust from senior level administrators. I have a good relationship with the top administrators and can typically get ahold of them, but responding to blogs is a “now” thing. Responding in 30 minutes as opposed to 90 is a big difference.

So – did I get it right?