Saturday, November 07, 2009

#blogchat update and how you can be involved!

As many of you know, for several months now we've been meeting on Twitter every Sunday nite at 8pm CT for #blogchat. This is where we discuss various topics concerning blogs and sometimes other forms of social media.

The chat has become very popular (thanks to you!), and that's gotten me to thinking about how that popularity can relate to this post on how we need to find ways to focus on new voices.

You see, one of the things that's been sorely missing from #blogchat is someone that can do a recap of each week's chat. I simply don't have the time, and it's really tough for any one person to commit to doing it every week, as something always comes up for all of us.

So David Spinks had a great idea. What he suggested was that we let someone each week volunteer to do the recap for that week's #blogchat. David has volunteered to do the recap for tomorrow nite's #blogchat and it will be posted on Scribnia's blog. The idea here is that each week, someone else can do the #blogchat recap on their blog, and I'll promote their blog on Twitter ahead of time, so the blogger will be doing all of us #blogchattters a service by doing the recap, and the recap should help drive traffic to their blog and give them a bit of exposure.

Sounds like a win-win for everyone, right? As I said, David will be doing tomorrow nite's recap, and since it is his idea, he'll also be doing the recap in about a month. But at the end of tomorrow nite's #blogchat, I'll take volunteers for the next week's #blogchat.

As for this week's topic, when I was at the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer, I attended Beth Harte's session on online communities. Beth asked the attendees how many of them had a community site, and without thinking, I put my hand up. Then I lowered it when I sheepishly realized that I had a blog, not a community site.

But I got to thinking about that, and maybe it's best that we DO think of our blogs as a community site, especially if we want to increase interaction and comments.

What are your thoughts? No wait...save them for tomorrow nite's #blogchat ;)

3 comments:

Arik C. Hanson, APR said...

That's a fantastic idea, Mack, on multiple levels. And, who better to kick things off than David?

By the way, to kick off the conversation Sunday, I definitely think of blogs as communities. To me, blogs are like coffee shops. Virtual "places" me and my friends and colleagues (like-minded people) hang out at discussing the issues of the day, sharing our thoughts and, in some cases, arguing. Doesn't that sound like a community to you?

@arikhanson

Linda Sherman said...

Sounds great. See you next Sunday.

Marko said...

Blogs are certainly virtual coffee shops. I wish my computer could whip up an espresso!