Build a blog in five minutes. Go!
Posted by Trey Reeme on January 25th, 2006
So you’ve been throwing the idea of starting a blog around, but you’re not sure where to start.
If you don’t have the resources or time to customize, brand, and host a blog internally, just get a free account at Wordpress or Blogger and use their free hosting and templates.
To start, simply visit Wordpress or Blogger and take the plunge. I’ll advocate using Wordpress just because I don’t like the big banner at the top of a Blogger blog. Of course there are other blog services out there, but I want to keep this post short and sweet.
The admin tools are so intuitive with either of the above, you’ll be posting in just a few minutes with no ramp-up required.
Not sold on the whole blogging idea yet? Read what I wrote a few months back.
I don’t believe the “how” question is what is hanging CUs up.. (At least in our organization!)
The discussions around blogging in our CU center around: “Are we ready – culturally – to be open about all operations within our organization.” – are we really ready to walk the walk. The great thing about blogging is the ability to have an open and honest conversation with the consumer in a public & semi-permanent forum. We believe that at least some groups of consumers would welcome the opportunity to get up-close and personal – but are we organizationally ready to be that open, even when our consumers identify a flaw or fault?
I personally find it encouraging that the conversation is happening in your CU. It is certainly important for a CU to discuss the impact of blogging before “walking the walk.”
There has been some discussion in the CU Times lately about the need to emphasize the member ownership aspect of credit unions, and I personally believe that a blog is a terrific way to promote that message. Banks can never be completely open with their customers because, at the very root, their concern is the wealth of their shareholders. Credit unions exist for the sole purpose of serving their members and increasing member wealth. My question is, how many of your members know how you’re different from a bank?
If you do decide to blog within your credit union, don’t be discouraged if you don’t get many comments right away or if many of your members aren’t reading the blog. The thing you’ll find is that those few members who are reading it will often serve as your “member evangelists,” taking your message and spreading it through one-on-one communication with their friends, coworkers, etc. They’ll also be the source of ideas and will warn you of things that they have problems with before the rest of your members reach the same conclusion.
To add a little to what Matt said, I’m in the middle of reading the blogging book Naked Conversations right now.
The authors, Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble and consultant Shel Israel, devote Chapter 9 of the book to “Thorns in the Roses” and if you’re still on the fence about blogging, I’d advocate picking up the book, as it’s worth every penny of the $15.72 that Amazon is now listing it for (new).
It’s not all “everyone should blog” either.
Believe me, I was the hardest sell on Open Source CU. What if I said something stupid? What if our competitors or critics posted stuff about us?
Now I realize that (a) if anyone said something bad about us, we’d have an opportunity to set it straight and we’ve got an audience of other commenters that I’d hope would back us up :), and (b) none of us have said anything that we regret saying (yet).
OSCU has been so good for our company (not for selling, but for talking to our industry) that our company’s website is now a blog, too, where we talk about the finer points of website design and development.
I’m sold on blogging, but our company’s culture is open/creative/unfiltered. You can probably tell that by looking at the Trabian site, our Flickr page, the posts we’ve made that show us, warts and all. If you do take the blogging plunge, you’ve got to be authentic, and if your culture doesn’t support it, either the culture needs to change or blogging won’t work very well and may come across as a PR stunt.
If we ever open a Trabian Employees Credit Union, you can bet there will be much blogging! :)
It’s worth noting that Blogger lets you do a lot more customization of the design, if you have access to any kind of designer. Wordpress is great, but its hosted blogs don’t really allow for any kind of customized visual branding.
...if that kind of thing is important to you, anyways. I myself like pretty pictures.