Todd Mundt

Brendan Greeley and Andy Carvin are back, with the second part of the Social Media session. This session is devoted more to the nuts and bolts of the tools. The following are my not-so-spruced up notes.
Blogging Tools

Brendan and Andy talked about both Wordpress and Movable Type software - the hosted and software versions. Radio Open Source is currently using Wordpress, but Brendan says they’re migrating to Drupal, which has some very interesting possibilities beyond the blogging platform. Andy talked about NPR’s use of Movable Type, some of the limitations of MT, and more broadly, the kind of IT support you might need for either.

Comments

Comments are immensely valuable. Brendan and Andy stressed that content providers need to allow comments, make the process of entering a comment and seeing it appear as simple and quick as possible. Brendan: clearly state, from the outset, the commenting guidelines because if, over time, you change those guidelines, it can break trust with your users, some of whom will be your best users. Brendan says the best comments are personal stories. Nobody’s opinion is very interesting, but their stories are. So end the post with questions and let those questions guide readers in making their comments. Carvin: have a mission statement so people know why you’re blogging and why you’re looking for input. Registration is a disincentive for commenters, but it allows a two way conversation. Radio Open Source asks for a zip code and a valid email address.

Community

As communities grow around your blog, those individuals will become aware of each other and they will understand their power. They gain a place at the table in terms of making suggestions for site improvements, etc. You ignore them at their peril.

RSS

This part of the presentation was a bit more torturous, as Brendan and Andy tried hard to help the audience understand the principles of RSS and the utility of feed readers like Bloglines. This is hard stuff to explain.

UPDATE: The wiki entry for the session is here.