The Blogging of Health Care

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The Blogging of Health Care

• January 26, 2007
• Kaya Walton
• Internet Consultant
• Issue Dynamics Inc. (IDI)

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SOTI State of the Internet

• About 141 million American adults are online.
• 91 read or send e-mail.
• 79 research for health or medical info online.
• 58 visit sites that provide support or info
  about medical conditions.
• Source Pew Internet Project, December 2006

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SOTB State of the Blogosphere

• 55 million blogs
• 39 of adult Americans online have read a blog.
• 8 have created a blog.
• Political blogs are driving blogosphere growth.
• 1 of blogs cover health issues.
• Source Pew Internet Project, December 2006

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Blogging Affects Issues?

• 61 of bloggers cite motivating other people to
  action as reason for blogging.
• 49 cite providing important information to
  others.
• Blogosphere strongly linked network
• Source Pew Internet Project, July 2006

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Blogosphere Network
Top 40 Political Blogs Coverage of 2004
Elections
Source Intelliseek, The Political Blogosphere
and the 2004 U.S. Election Divided They Blog
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So You Want to Start A Blog
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Recipe for Blogging Success
Good Blog Post
Feedback
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Mission

• What is the mission of your company or
  organization?
• What will be the mission of your blog?
• What is your audience?
• Focus on a specific issue or topic.
• Dont forget the big picture. How does the blog
  fit in?

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Goals

• What are your communications imperatives?
• What role will this blog play in your
  organizational strategy?
• What are the expectations?
• What about ROI?

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Writing for the Web

• Keep it short.
• Use the inverted pyramid.
• Make it easy to scan (short paragraphs, lists,
  etc.).
• Quote other bloggers and sources.
• Use links.
• Highlight important words.

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Other Suggestions

• Coming up with something new to write every week
  isnt easy. Here are some tips
• Be realistic about your publishing schedule.
• Focus your writing on what you know. Keep track
  of what others are saying.
• Have several bloggers publish entries.
• Include open-ended questions in your blog posts.

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Dont forget your headlines!

• Headlines play a unique role on the Internet
• Appear in lists
• Appear in search engine results
• Appear in RSS feeds
• Tend to be used as links

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Blogging Policy Questions

• Do you have established guidelines?
• Will there be an approval process?
• Will you be accepting comments?
• What is the escalation process?

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Blog Commenting Policy

• Three types of comment options
• Decide what is allowed (Terms of Use)
• What will be deleted?
• How will users be informed?
• Will there be an escalation option?
• Make sure everyone knows

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Blog Monitoring Promotions
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The Value of Blog Monitoring

• The better you know the landscape of the
  blogosphere, the more effectively you can monitor
  and grow the value of your blog.

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Blog Monitoring

• Who is driving the discussion?
• Who supports you?
• Who is critical?
• What is being discussed about your topic?
• Whats important to bloggers?

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How to monitor the blogosphere

• Technorati
• Bloglines
• Google News Alerts
• BlogPulse
• http//www.technorati.com, http//www.bloglines.co
  m

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Promoting Your Blog
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Promoting Your Blog

• Blog roll
• Blogger relations
• Social networks
• Flickr, YouTube, Digg, del.icio.us
• RSS Feeds

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Other Sites You Can Use

• Advertising BlogAds.com
• Tracking Technorati.com BlogPulse.com
• Launching LiveJournal, Blogger, BlogSpot,
  TypePad, Moveable Type
• Writing BlogWrite for CEOs Blogwrite.blogs.c
  om
• Intelligence BloggerRelations.com

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For questions and comments

• Kaya Walton
• Internet Consultant
• Issue Dynamics, Inc.
• kaya_at_idi.net
• [phone]