Some tips from the flagship blogging team at Macromedia. And when they talk, they really talk. Another good example of why people listen when these guys speak.

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OK, I probably need help. I’m starting to realise that I have a real ‘list’ fetish. Just when I think I’m going to stop promoting these, another one comes along that I just can’t help taking note of. This time it’s some top tips - especially for those just getting started.

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John Cass posts a reply to David Churbuck’s excellent article on corporate blogging. Cass states some of the exceptions to Churbuck’s rule including the work of Dell and Macromedia in the approach they’ve taken to setting up corporate blogs.

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Wordpress has attracted a further $29M in venture capital from The New York Times Company. Expect to see further increases in development and more space on the public blogging space Wordpress.com.

A-listers currently using the platform include CNN, The Wall Street Journal and the Times.

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Copyblogger achieves one of those rare things in this blog - he asks a question and elicits a bunch of quite coherent comments. The question being what should a blog be? Does it need to be short and pithy? Why can’t it be an article? Do you need to update it every day?

Could this be down to the fact that all too often there’s confusion between a blog and blogging. A blog is a specific kind of platform (a light-weight CMS, if you like) that allows you to write. And that’s the point - it’s writing. And like a notepad, it’s entirely up to you what you do with it. As long as you’re aware of its advantages and limitations, go ahead and in the words of Digital Underground, Doowatchalike.

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Ha! Benjamin Kuo makes a direct link between Yahoo’s lack of recent updates to its corporate blogs and the fact it’s just about to make some well-publicized layoffs. Central theme is how many people are going to blog passionately (read effectively) under those circumstances.

I wonder how far you could follow this idea? By looking at the frequency/level of passion in posts could you work out company health? Could work in the tech field. As an aside, BEA blogs gave a good indication of how insiders felt about the acquisition noises coming from Oracle.

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We’re trawling around at the moment wondering how we can make our blog posts look more exciting.

Once you get beyond the dodgy splash screen that serves only to filter you between the blogs or the forums, I really found myself getting into the design of the Lenovo social media space.

The blog front page effortlessly displays everything from Del.icio.us tags to the most recent comments. A spotlight is used to rotate between the separate blogs displaying key info and latest post. The blogs themselves are loosely related to the standard Wordpress layout but all the core information is again well-presented.

One thing that stands out is the use of flickr to give the site some personality. The pictures aren’t all stock marketing ones, either. That’s somewhat refreshing.

As the new social media being taken up by corporations evolve, we need better ways to encorporate these into the corporate organization. Everything from where should social media teams be assembled (marketing, corporate comms, customer services) to what metrics should be used to govern these teams.

What’s more - how can this be instituted without affecting the nature of the medium.

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