I was attending a seminar on public relations today and the speaker addressed some issues about blogs which I realized are self-evident to me as a blogger, but might not be so clear to anyone pondering starting one.

As much as I like to talk about how useful blogs can be to arts organizations, they aren’t for everyone. As with any application of technology, you shouldn’t be trying to use blogs or podcasts or whatever because they are the hot new thing everybody is using. Employing a technology poorly with no sense of purpose is worse than employing it poorly with an objective. If you have a purpose, then you know what direction to pursue to make the technology work for you. Without a purpose, you are forever flailing.

In relation to blogs in particular-

Don’t start one if you don’t have time to regularly devote to it. The online community is voracious. If you commit to writing every day, write that often. If it is weekly, then stick to that general schedule. If you aren’t producing as promised, people will stop visiting. Since you are probably blogging for the exposure and public relations benefit a lack of regular visitors has little value. Worse, people may start filling your comments section with insults and harsh criticism if they think no one is minding the store.

Blogging is definitely time consuming unless you are the type that can produce prolifically with little effort so you definitely want to make sure you have the time. One of the important operative words there is YOU. One of the mistakes the public relations people cited is having subordinates ghost writing for the head of an organization since the boss rarely has the time. The damage that is done and the loss of faith that occurs when it is revealed that the boss isn’t the one writing is often quite great.

At the very least, the person under whose name the entries are being written should be reviewing the material before it is posted. Ideally, they should be the one hitting the post button.

My last pointer is the most difficult to advise people about due to a lack of hard and fast rules. Be careful when and how you respond to criticism. Some times you have to respond quickly to avert a real crisis in progress. Often you should only do so after some consideration and letting your temper cool or not at all. Unfortunately, fiery invective and wild accusations often appear to require addressing immediately lest the blogosphere think ill of you.

It is only later that you realize you proved the old maxim–It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Thanks to search engine caches, it can be rather difficult to expunge the record of what you said from the internet by simply editing your entries. Blogging and emailing have joined driving as activities you shouldn’t engage in while agitated.

I got a call this weekend from a company doing a survey on local radio. The purpose, I was told, was to improve local programming. I told the girl I wasn’t sure I could help since I didn’t listen to local radio, but rather listened to a feed from a radio station over the internet.

I am guessing she decided my answer fell in the doesn’t listen to radio category because she thanked me for my time and hung up. I also assume that she was working for a company hired to conduct the survey and not for the company(ies) who commissioned it and thus had no real investment in exploring why I didn’t listen.

If the purpose was to improve the quality of local programming, the next questions should be: what do I listen to, if such programming was offered locally would I listen and if not, what is it about the online feed that was so appealing?

Even if I didn’t listen to any radio at all and only to my CD collection or iPod, a little discovery as to why I didn’t listen to radio might be in order. My reasons might be reversible if the right station came along.

Of course, maybe they didnt really want to improve programming but had some sort of agenda they were pursuing with the survey. One of the cardinal rules of decision based surveying is never ask a question you have no intention of acting upon.

The whole incident made me think maybe I should look back at the surveys I use to see if they are still pertinent. I also got to thinking that perhaps I should also read the responses a little more closely to see if they clue me in to other questions I should be asking. There may be a single perfect survey question for determining loyalty and growth, but there are plenty of other things I want to know.