August 10, 2007

Blogs are buzzing - but do they work?

I've noticed recently that outdoor organizations are hitting web 2.0 like it's going out of style.

This probably was inevitable given the number of unofficial groups, blogs, sites and videos from our alumni. At some point a communication director somewhere woke up and said, hey - we'd better get on board with this otherwise we'll loose control of our message.

What I'm wondering is does this work and if so what are the strategies to help make it work well? Or more fundamentally what metrics can we use to even begin to ask and measure that question?

Here's a short list of some official and unofficial web 2.0 sites for big outdoor organizations.
Official NOLS blog
Official (?) NOLS YouTube channel
Big unofficial Facebook NOLS group (sorry must have Facebook account to see this)
Official Thompson Island MySpace profile
Unofficial Outward Bound instructor group on Facebook
Official North Carolina Outward Bound YouTube channel
Boy Scouts of America "Cub Cast"

I know there are many more, but that's just a sample to get started with. I'm not the first person to ask this question, Li and Bernoff asked about the ROI of blogging, and Hallett has posted about best practices for blogging events.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:23 AM

    Some great links here in the use of blogs for events. I have been hoping to use it for some of our annual events for schools and staff in our region. I have the same questions though about useing them, but I guess I can try one and see what sort of response I get.

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  2. Anonymous11:58 PM

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