Course outline: One day insight course for web publishers

Coffee

1. Intro: Harnessing the power of community

• Context, Objective, Map, Benefits
• Action Logs - the course includes the usual log of 'actions' for delegates to ensure you act on all this new knowledge
• Hand out packs; talk through packs

Intro: First workshop: understanding the theory

2. Communities, traffic and the role of blogging

Metcalf's law, tipping points, and why harnessing the power of a web community can be key to getting the critical mass of activity on your website.

3. Sales promotion ladder

Fitting traffic development into classic marketing theory

4. Understanding blogspeak

Getting to grips with the jargon - explaining the anatomy of a weblog: key elements and how they work.

Action logs

Coffee

Intro: Second workshop: Putting it into practice

5. Getting started

Getting a simple blog up and running in a few easy steps

Discussion: Role of third party content management systems; debate about insourcing and outsourcing, ease of doing this, making your own postings live, resources they feel they'd need

6. Blogging for publishers: Case study of The Guardian

We follow through what a weblog service is for a mainstream publisher

Discussion points: what they like, what they could use

7. Getting to grips with RSS

What it is, how it works and why it matters to website publishers.

Recap and action logs

Lunch

Intro: Third workshop: The art of community building (including case studies)

8. Building strong communities

Elements in building strong communities, types of people you'll find in communities, nurturing your community, legacy and behavior today.

9. Building community audiences

Customer acquisition and retention, community healthchecks

10. Commercial blogging in action

Maintaining freshness with Google Alerts and other tools can help you build your content

11. Building editorial resources with alerts

Politics: Blogging for America, My Society and Tim Ireland. Corporations and personal brands

12. Advanced uses of blogging in action

The good, the bad and the ugly. Lessons from blogs by or about Dell, Sun, Tesco and Cillit Bang

13. Types of community

Understanding community types

Recap and action logs

Coffee

Intro: Fourth workshop: Monetisation & summary (including spreadsheets)

14. Quantifying the benefit

Working through a basic spreadsheet of audiences, posts, pages, ad impressions and other KPIs

15. Recap and reflections

Context, Objective, Map, Benefits

Action Logs - the course includes the usual log of 'actions' for delegates to ensure you act on all this new knowledge

Recap and action logs

Reference material

This includes

• Craig's List, Richard Duvall profiles
• Book reviews for Who let the blogs out, The Tipping Point and ClueTrain Manifesto
• Strategies for newspaper executives

Close