Organizations should be looking for ways to get their content into the hands of bloggers who might want to write about them.
Take a look at the item I posted just before this one (below). It was a complete cut-and-paste job off of the Ziff-Davis IT Facts blog. Is that misappropriation of content? Not when the content provider wants you to. The item appeared as a normal blog post on ZD’s IT Facts site, but a link that appears right alongside the usual permalink and comments link invited me to “Blog This,” so I clicked it and found myself presented with a repurposed version of the post with all HTML-coded links already embedded and a notice that read: “If you want to include this posting in your blog…Cut and paste this formatted text.” The trackback URL was right there, as well.
A lot of bloggers wouldn’t want to simply copy what a company produced for them, me among them (I only did it with the post below so I could point to it in this post). But some would, and for others it would be a simple matter to start with the formatted text, add some observations, and be done. The fact that links are already added could be enough to lead some bloggers to cut and paste rather than start from scratch, ensuring that some of the message as crafted gets onto some independent blogs. It’s a nifty idea that just about anybody could implement at next to no cost.
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
