Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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Etiquette and common sense for how to handle these new realities are still evolving.
Unfortunately, many hiring departments take a draconian approach: one risqué photo on Facebook
= no job. For now, the most important rule might be simply to consider everything you write as
being copied, in skywriting, over the heads of everyone you know—or will meet in the future.
Because that's what it will feel like when you go for that job interview with the company whose
advertising you so eloquently criticized on your blog a year or two ago.
WordPress User Case Study 2: A Business Blog
The use of blogs by business is only increasing. Why? I'm sure many business bloggers ask them-
selves the same question as the clock ticks past midnight and they're still awake, adding a post to
the blog that's eating their free time!
Business blogging, though, can be extremely valuable, both within a business and for communica-
tion with the outside world. As with our individual online histories, best practice is still evolving.
Finding the right tone, mixing a serious business approach with a personal touch, can be all too
difficult.
A business blog has somewhat mixed motivations. Publishing it is important in and of itself. Just
the fact that you're blogging might make a positive impression on people. If only one person reads
the blog in a given month, but that person is a prospective employee who decides to join the
company as a result, or a disgruntled customer who gets a question answered, then the blog is
worthwhile.
Businesses usually, however, want to build up traffic. So company blogs are usually promoted in
other communications, such as on the company's permanent website.
This is where one of WordPress's truly distinguishing capabilities comes in. This is the ability to
easily create not only posts—typical blog posts, which appear with the newest one first—but
pages, static web pages that contain reference and other information.
WordPress is one of the few blogging tools that lets you use the posting interface to create pages,
treats pages as being just as important as posts, and even lets you make a static page the front
page of your blog, which instantly makes it feel more like a traditional website.
Along with WordPress's strong growth path from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, which gives
you just about unlimited customization potential, pages and other WordPress features make it hard
to beat as a tool for business blogs.
A business blog can be for building up a personal brand as well as the brand of an established
business. One of the authors (McCallister) keeps a WordPress blog mostly about open source tech-
nology, shown in Figure 1.4. His blog gets and keeps him involved with an ever-shifting group of
fellow nerds kind, wise, and, by coincidence, unusually attractive people who share his particular
interests.
The Metaverse blog demonstrates several benefits of online communities. In normal conversation,
one's passionate interest in open source tools would be met by incomprehension from most people.
On one's blog, though, where people come either because of prior knowledge of the blog and its
topic, or through online search, an interested audience who can discuss the various tools intelli-
gently is ensured.
