Blogging's Six Pillars

The following is taken from Naked Conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. (John Wiley and Sons 2006. page 28), and I include it because of my ongoing posts about the Church and the Internet.

Blogs are:
1. Publishable: Anyone can publish a blog. You can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is instantly available worldwide.

2. Findable: Through search engines, people will find blogs by subject, by author, or both. The more you post, the more findable you become.

3. Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation. Interesting topical conversations move from site to site, linking to each other. Through blogs, people with shared interests build friendship unrestricted by geographic borders.

4. Viral. Information often spreads faster through blogs than via a news service. No form of viral marketing matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.

5. Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get free ‘home delivery’ of RSS-enabled blogs. RSS lets you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated, saving you search time. This process is considerably more efficient that the last-generation method of visiting one page of one web site at a time looking for changes.

6. Linkable: because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to millions of other bloggers.

This is a topic of continuing interest (to me, at least!) The Naked Conversations blog is now called Global Neighbourhoods. (Not nearly such an eye-catching title!)

And in September, Shel Israel will publish Twitterville: how businesses can thrive in the new global neighbourhood. (Or should we substitute 'churches' for 'businesses?')

Blogging Church

I've been reading the book, Naked Conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. It's focused at businesses more than mission-minded people, but one church in Dallas gets two pages in the book, because Brian Bailey began a blog there under the church's wing (originally not under its wing, in fact), and is cited for showing how a large organisation like the Dallas Fellowship Church, can improve its communication skills both in-house and amongst its congregation through the use of blogging.

Bailey's blog is called LeaveItBehind (not LeftBehind, as I first read it).

Brian Bailey has gone on to write a book with Terry Storch called (not particularly originally!) The Blogging Church. Further, they've also set up a discussion board on Facebook. Now this is an interesting thing. We seem to have gone full circle here, since the Internet used to consist mainly of discussion boards (their proper name escapes me at the moment, but no doubt someone can remind me). Anyway, if you're not already a member of Facebook, you can join in half a moment, and joining the discussion board is even faster.