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Big Brother is Watching

Our big brother in bloggery, Vaughn Ververs, over at Public Eye, just sent along this email, with some helpful advice. He's been doing this a lot longer than we have, so we thought it was worth paying attention to, and worth posting. Enjoy. And when you're done, go over and visit the gang at PE. Tell them we said hello!

Here's A Little Friendly Advice

Hi, I'm Vaughn Ververs and as the editor of Public Eye I just want to say -- welcome to the blogosphere, Couric & Co., we're always happy to see some new faces in the neighborhood. Since a large part of your mission is to engage the audience in conversation, I thought I might offer up a few helpful hints for you all that we've picked up from this blog business over the past year.

Feel free to take or ignore any of this but rule number one is this: Link. Link to other blogs, link to news stories you discuss, link back to yourselves. Just link, it adds value and depth to a blog posting. Once you have the links thing down, the next thing to do is to listen. Providing a forum for people to tell you what they think is only a start to the conversation. Listening, responding and explaining makes real communication possible. Not every comment or e-mail is created equal but you'll want to reward the more thoughtful ones. Talk back to them in the comments section or in a post, you'll be surprised at the reaction that receives.

Familiarize yourself with the blogosphere. There are hundreds of interesting and well-written blogs out there and you can't read them all each day but understanding them and knowing what they're interested in and talking about will help when it comes to talking with or about them. Finally, be yourselves. A discussion filled with lots of stilted formalities isn't the kind of thing most blog readers are looking for – they want interesting thoughts presented honestly and sincerely. That part is fairly simple, really.

Enough of that, I'll now leave skedaddle back to my blog – where you have an open invitation to post anytime – and try to follow my own advice. Judging by the level of interest expressed here so far today, you're off to a good start. From one blog to another, best of luck, we'll be anxiously reading from here on out.

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