And the best blog award goes to...

Jonathan Bowers, September 28th 2006, 11:08AM

There have been awards for the best blog for some time online, normally generated by those who are fuelling the explosion. However, with the growth of MySpace and other social networking sites, blog awards are now hitting areas of the mainstream.

The sector in question is (unsurprisingly) the music industry and the BT Digital Music Awards have introduced a Best Music Blog category this year.

The awards on the 3rd October will pit the likes of Lily Allen against the Streets and Sandi Thom to find the best 'online communicators' in the business.

But talking of business - I wonder when our sector's awarding bodies will start to recognise the important role blogs can play within the communication strategy enough offer rewards?

Tags: awards, blogging, myspace
# Comment (0 comments)

Building the profile of a creative sector

Jonathan Bowers, September 6th 2006, 10:07AM

Yesterday, I spent the day at FACT in Liverpool. I was producing a podcast for the Arts Council, who were presenting a one day conference for Arts organisations across the North West.

The day was all about blogging, podcasting, RSS and e-marketing and it was interesting to see the spread of knowledge across the delegates. Some knew all about the various techniques but many were there because they were entering at ground level.

Perhaps, most interesting was the fact that the majority of the clued up members worked for the smallest organisations. They'd already got to grips with various technologies through the need to stretch very limited budgets.

It felt a little bit like taking coals to Newcastle. With podcasting being a very creative medium, I spent a lot of time talking to some of the North West's most creative thinkers about how they can innovate their web services.

The podcast (online soon) offers a flavour of the day and gives direction to some pioneering thoughts about the arts sector online today - so it'll be well worth listening to. A podcast can only be as good as its subjects and there was a wealth of knowledge and experience at FACT yesterday, so I am looking forward to the end result.

Tags: blogging, fact, podcasting, rss
# Comment (0 comments)

What makes you an author?

Jonathan Bowers, August 16th 2006, 11:13AM

One of the Time top 50 websites of 2006 is blurb.com. Time concentrates on the site's service of turning blogs into hard copy books and it got me thinking about what gives information authority.

The web has nurtured the emergence of amongst other things, blogs and citizen journalism and their popularity has proved that people will read and be influenced by certain things. In varying amounts; good quality writing, individual opinions, insightful thinking, an original eye on a topic and authenticity have combined to deliver a new accessible genre of writing that suits both mass consumption and niche groups. And those that make connections with their readers grow to become respected and successful.

So why do we need to combine individual blogs in a print format? Do we feel that our opinions and experience come with more clout if they are bound in hardback? Do we believe that selling our knowledge is the best way to gauge how valuable it is? It's not as though the web has no other ways to chart this.

Will the success of blurb.com depend on the ego's of writers who feel that there is still an important devide between published and unpublished writers?

Tags: blogging, influence
# Comment (1 comments)

Blessed be the blog

Chris Norton, July 21st 2006, 10:37AM

A while ago the Web was in the grip of robots. Take two of the classic web searches (no, not those two, this is a family blog) - consumer electronics and celebrities. I'd be searching for a USB powered keyboard warmer and the latest pictures of Brian Blessed, and all I'd get was a hundred price comparison websites and some generic celeb-pic site with only a couple of fuzzy pics of Brian and a hundred links trying to sell me junk I didn't need, USB powered mouse-mat warmers? Useless!

These searches are bound to still have Google spit a lot of the old rubbish back at me, but nowadays the blogging explosion means that quite a lot of information on the web is now back to being produced by real, living, breathing people. Amidst the auto-generated pap, I'll typically be able to read someone slagging off the latest USB powered keyboard warmer (and saying that Apple are about to come out with one that'll revolutionise PC interface heating), and a few reviews of Brian Blessed's astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes.

The web is being repopulated by real content, now that it's finally possible for totally non-technical types and geeks alike to get involved. As of this week, India can get involved too - now that the Indian government has lifted its recent blogging ban, that's another billion people to contribute some real content to our web. Now, considering I was lying in the last paragraph and can find hardly anything about Brian Blessed's astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes, I'm hoping at least a few of the billion can get writing about this important matter. Real content! Let's go!

Tags: blogging, content, users, worldwideweb
# Comment (0 comments)

New media is the way forward for PR

Jonathan Bowers, July 10th 2006, 10:09AM

The CIPR Northern conference last Thursday was full of great speakers and new ideas for the PR community - and the most resounding gong was for blogging and the new media techniques.

The new media in this case is the myriad of ways that we can use the Internet to reach all our stakeholders and customers and every single session included at least a passing glance to how we must change our thinking to incorporate the Net.

I was there producing a podcast for the conference, which I have been editing over the last few days. It will be online by tomorrow and I'll include a link to it as soon as possible. It gives a flavour of the event and you'll see just how prominent blogging and the Internet are.

In particular, the keynote speakers looked at the effect of social networking and the globalisation of information and stories.

More news on this soon...

Tags: blogging, cipr, communication, socialnetworking
# Comment (2 comments)