Diane Wieland has a great post at the Duo Consulting blog called Free Expert Blogging Advice that points to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. In the blog entry she encourages bloggers to learn from the reviews of blogs using a standard set of criteria found at Business and Blogging. They say:
Good Blogs will be:
- easy to find
- frequently updated
- written in an engaging manner
- relevant
- focused
- honest
- interactive
- responsive
Bad blogs will be:
- hard to find
- infrequently updated
- censored
- one-way communication
- unresponsive
- defensive
Ugly blogs will be:
- boring
- inaccurate or misleading
- filled with technical jargon (for a non-technical audience)
- full of regulations and legal disclaimers
- self-absorbed
- press releases in disguise
It would be interesting to apply these review criteria on technical writing tool vendor’s blogs. MadCap has what I consider to be a groundswell-blogger-style with personalities first, company second. Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite team’s blog has a distinct corporate and enterprise appeal while still identifying posters by name and letting you get to know them. ComponentOne has a collection of blogs and bloggers but buzz generation fills the first page. Author-it has a new nicely branded WordPress blog. WebWorks has a group of bloggers also and Alan Porter is my favorite blogger there. TechSmith hosts three blogs – the Jing Blog, Screencast.com Blog and The Visual Lounge Blog.
I won’t apply bad or ugly criteria to any of these. I’m happy they’re blogging. What are your thoughts as more and more of “our” vendors begin to join the blog world? Have I missed any of your vendor favorites?
For even more corporate blogging resources, see the link list on Rhonda Bracey’s post entitled Corporate/business blogging.