So, we've taken the plunge. On Tuesday the communications office at Colgate started using a a blogging platform for posting and distributing our stories, and -- this is the cool part and potentially scary part -- we've opened up our stories to comments.
We hope to create a dialogue and build relationships among those interested in Colgate through the comment feature.
Here is the blog, which we've designed to mimic our main site to a large extent, while hopefully utilizing the power of blogs in an efficient way.
I know plenty of universities are using blog software as content management systems, but I don't know of any using the comment feature. If you know of any, please share.
We're using Movable Type, which is the same platform I'm using for this post. (A Colgate alumnus, Michael Sippey '90, is an executive with Six Apart, the parent firm of Movable Type).
In addition to the community building goal, we hope the blog will:
-- Raise the profile of our stories through tagging. This means we will increase the likelihood of our stories being picked up by search engines, blogs, and other news aggregators. This tagging feature will help us promote Colgate, our faculty members, students, new initiatives, etc.
-- Categorize our stories in more ways which, when used with RSS, will allow us to distribute stories more easily to the university's portal, campaign site, alumni site, and others.
-- Make our News Headlines page more user friendly and more engaging. We can better promote our photos, which appear in the photo-community site flickr. We are highlighting our videos with a new logo, which is prominently placed on the page.
-- Help staff members quickly react to situations and post more stories more often, adding another layer to our public relations efforts.
Wish us luck!
Comments (4)
This is really fantastic; I'm very intrigued and I'm wishing you luck indeed!
One (perhaps naive) question: does anyone know if this has worked in a corporate setting? Our current portal (which I inherited upon taking my current position) isn't nearly as interactive as I'd like, and I'd love to try something like this, but realize it's public and that could spell any number of disasters, I suppose. Have any corporate editors tried this?
Posted by Don Lariviere | October 22, 2007 8:30 AM
Posted on October 22, 2007 08:30
Thanks for the report on this new initiative, Tim. I'm also standing on the precipice of implementing a blog in a corporate environment. I hadn't thought about the media relations value through tagging.
Posted by weblackey | October 23, 2007 9:55 AM
Posted on October 23, 2007 09:55
A follow up comment:
How does posting your news on a blog differ from posting it on your main website in terms of visibility by search engines, and thus, the media?
Posted by weblackey | October 23, 2007 4:32 PM
Posted on October 23, 2007 16:32
Hi weblackey,
We're convinced the power of the tagging and keyword tools will extend the reach of our stories. We need to track this more formally over time, but at least through initial web searches I've liked how our stories are appearing through searches.
Posted by Tim | October 26, 2007 8:46 AM
Posted on October 26, 2007 08:46