A Media Person's Musings

Blogging v Twittering

I am not the most prolific blogger - mostly because I just find it difficult to commit the time to putting my thoughts to paper. My fellow bloggers at Peppercom seem to have managed their time much more efficiently. Steve Cody, for example, manages to use his time on the train to blog and often encourages others to participate in his blog as guest bloggers .

I, however, seem to think about blogging on something every day and then it gets pushed to the end of the priorty list. Also since becoming pregnant the late night hours on the computer have been replaced by sleep - cutting homework time by half!

So I recently made the move to Twitter. I was of the opinion that being able to make a multitude of small posts would keep me ever-present in the blogosphere or twittersphere or whatever they are calling it now.

I do like Twitter: The platform, to me, is so much more accessible than logging into a Typepad account and then having to add links and pictures etc. And I can Twitter from my iPhone so I can access it anywhere.

But now I am feeling limited by that too - I find it very difficult to say what i want to in just 140 characters. Hence this blog post! Will I ever be happy?

Back to Blogging

I was pleasantly surprised to get a few emails after yesterday's blog and pleased to see it was still getting read. I had an enforced absence recently as I was out of action after an operation. Now I am typing fit and back to blogging!

Blogs - News or Views?

Fellow PR blogger Simon Collister just highlighted an interesting incident in the blogosphere yesterday - http://simoncollister.typepad.com/simonsays/2007/03/recess_monkey_c.html . A left wing political blogger Alex Hilton had been 'tipped off' by a reliable journalist source that former British PM Maggie Thatcher was dead and immediately rushed out a post with the 'scoop' - http://www.recessmonkey.com/2007/03/05/stop-press-maggie-dead/. Of course it was not true and Alex, having discovered the prank, posted an apology saying that he rushed it out before going to bed.

Alex has come in for a lot of criticism about how he handled the whole thing but one thing that was highlighted is that this blogger was trying to be a news source. I am all for 'people publishing' but can blogs really be credible news sources? I thought that blogging was all about giving your opinion on news and issues that are important to you..not actually delivering the news.

That said, it is a great story and hats off to Simon for picking it up, however I am suspicious that maybe Alex wasn't that naive in not checking the tip off for its veracity..maybe, just maybe, it was a cynical attemt to get more traffic to his site. If the intention was to stir up a hornets nest he has done just that but looking at the comments on his blog he may have turned more people off than on..

Bill's Blog Boob

I was pleased to see Bill Marriott of the Marriott hotel group had started a blog. It's a smart move to get closer to his customer base and get direct feedback on what they do and don't want. His blog on making all of the hotels in the group smoke-free (http://bill-marriott.blogs.marriott.com/default.asp?item=482866) demonstrated the company's values and elicited a lot of comments.

However I was disappointed to see that he gave a 'guest spot' to one of his employees to extol the virtues of the company's 'Pathways' programme - http://www.blogs.marriott.com/default.asp?item=509040. Marriott's organisation runs a great programme to help people get off welfare and become employed. In the blog a remarkable lady called Valerie McSwain describes her career at the company.

Her story is compelling but a blog, in my opinion, should be written by the person who owns it. If Bill Marriott had written himself about the remarkable people that work for him it would resonate a lot better. Unfortunately this came across as a blatant piece of promotion for the company.