Blogging Simplified

My lovely wife has up and posted a great alphabetical ( Part 1, anyway ) ‘Guide to Blogging’ type of post over at Self Help Daily.

Do me a big favor and click thru and read it and if it’s not too far out of your realm of nicety, link to her post, leave a comment, do a Trackback or something nice.

She blogs her butt off on about 14 blogs, every day, for our network and doesn’t get a lot of publicity or acknowledgment from the blogosphere.

It’s a helluva post and when the two of them are done, they’ll be a tremendous help to some blogger somewhere.

Thanks in advance for making her day and mine.

Is there anything we might be able to do to convince all those would-be bloggers who wrote 4 or 5 posts and then gave up to crash their dead blogs ?

I hate following an organic search result, only to find a blog that has a grand total of 5 posts, the last of which was 7 months ago.

There are 2 gazillion blogs created every day, all but 3 of which are destined to go the way of the platypus and the loon.

How about a feature in Blogger and Word Press, where most of these are created, that detonates the blog and all archives after 60 days of inactivity.

Anybody else have the misfortune to see dead blogs ?

Got any ideas ?

I just read that quote in Mark Joyner’s newest book - The Irresistable OFFER. Of course he wasn’t the first to quote Sir Winston, but he was the first to write it where I happened to be reading.

I’ve been reading a lot of silly blog posts of late that are touting the death of corporate blogs, which, in my highly suspect opinion, have not even begun to begin, as of yet.

I’d like to see the muckety muck’s face that’s making the decision on whether-or-not to blog when he reads that quote.

How can a corporation that sells a service or product to the public even think about not having a blog ? How can they leave all that power on the back shelf ?

Somewhere, some blogger is talking about your product or service. Would it not be better and more manageable for it to be on YOUR blog, rather than one you don’t know about ?

Have a manufacturing defect you just found out about ? Who better to tell your evangelists/customers than you ?

Found a new use for your product ? Who better to tell the world than you and how could you do it any quicker and more thoroughly than on your blog ?

Got a unsatisfied customer out there ? Where can you better defend your product or ask other customers about the issue ?

No, the corporate blog ain’t dead yet. We may not call ‘em blogs much longer ( I hope ), but the instant interactivity that this content management system provides is here to stay.

Just in case you didn’t see it, I caught a thread at Promocharger, which ultimately led me to C/Net News.

The basic premise is this -

You cannot lure people to your site/blog with seemingly innocent wording ( read as headlines ) and then show them adult content.

One more reason you need to go to the Ask Bob Silber page and ask a freakin’ question.

One more reason you need all the legal education you can get about blogs - which happen to be the same thing as a website and the term Webmaster and blogger are now interchangeable.

One more reason to be careful and get some Disclaimers, some Terms of Service statements, some Child Online Protection Act info and lots of other questions answered.

Bob and I are trying to help, but we can’t help you unless you help us by asking questions.

If you like to read the C/Net article, click away.

So far we’ve gotten a few questions, but not nearly enough, so I’m gonna toss out some chum and see if any of you sharks will bite.

1) Can we use third party forum posts as content on our blogs ?

2) Can we use third party screenshots on our blog ?

3) Does our email update service ( FeedBlitz, FeedBurner, Aweber ) have to be CAN-SPAM Act Compliant ?

4) Can we sue Google for changing our Page Rank ?

5) Do we have any liability for any of the affiliate programs we promote ?

6) How can we be sure of ownership of the blog design we pay for ?

7) What do we need to do to make sure we own the content we pay to have written ?

I had a piece of software coded ( as a give-away for the purpose of getting links and subscribers ) on elance.com, what if some of the code it was copied from another piece of software ?

9) I write a health related blog…am I liable for any claims I make ? … claims made by products I endorse ?

10) Can my copy be too hypey for my own good on my blog ?

11) What can happen to me if I make defamatory or derogatory comments about a person ? … about a company ?

12) Do I need disclaimers on my blog ?

13) Do I need a Privacy Policy on my blog ?

14) Do I need a Terms of Service statement ?

15) I post semi-nude to nude photos on my blog, can I be charged under the Child Online Protection Act ?

16) I sell software on my blog and someone’s misusing a copy they bought from me. Is my software license that I had them check a legal, binding contract ?

As you might imagine, I’ve edited some of the questions for clarity and brevity.

This is not quite half of what I’ve received so far, so you can see we need more.

Please either leave your question here in the comments section, or go to the Ask Bob Silber page and ask your question there.

If you go to the Ask Bob Silber page, you’ll have the chance to sign-up for an email update of the products readiness and/or subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog.

Please do me the favor of :

- Leaving a question at one place or the other

- Linking to this post or linking to the original post

- Emailing an announcement to your list

We need all the questions we can get, so we can educate you as much as possible.