Campaign Kickstart

2006 was the year of the Blog. The consultantocracy decided that blogs were the new hot thing, and every candidate had one on their site.

But the candidates didn’t know what a blog was. They didn’t know how to use it. The result was scores of campaign blogs with only one or two entries, which looked feeble and disorganized.

Don’t start your own blog unless you intend to use it.

Instead, start a strong blogging personality at a large blog where the readership is in tune to your message. This way you can drive new traffic to your site, and if you should slack off the gap between diaries won’t appear as readily.

What is a blog, anyway?

A blog is a website that’s updated regularly and, as opposed to a strict news page, it invokes a personal reflection on events above and beyond what an editorial would contain. Usually a blog will allow other people to add comments—a double-edged sword when you’re trying to control the message.

It’s a running documentary, even considered a historical reference to some. Therefore it’s very much frowned upon to retroactively edit and delete articles. Updates are allowable, if they’re well marked. The reasoning behind all this is etiquette: If someone leaves a negative comment regarding something you wrote, and then you go back and edit the part that got negative feedback, what they wrote is no longer applicable.

The answer for many is to moderate comments to their blog. But I gotta say, delaying someone’s post takes half the fun out of it for them. Better be ready to quickly approve comments if you go this route.