Building relationships through blogging

One of the difficult things for late adopters of blogging to get their heads around is that blogging isn't just about getting your message out or promoting your organization: it is very much about building relationships. Web 2.0, with its emphasis on the collective, represents a culture shift, especially for people from the "western world" who can be very task-oriented. Maintaining relationships does enable you to meet your goals. If you develop a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship with anyone, it can be fruitful. Well, you can be fruitful and multiply by developing relationships with entire networks of people.

There has been some really good scholarly work done in this area. Early pioneers Taylor and Kent (1998) delineated some of the basic principles of relationship building through Internet dialogue.

Here's some advice, gleaned from these principles:

1. Provide useful information on your blog.
2. Frequently update your site and provide new content to engage people and keep them coming back.
3. Make your blog easy to use and navigate. It should be transparent from the homepage.
4. Try to keep people on your blog.

This last point is a little controversial. The logic is that if you provide too many links from your site, especially permanent ones, it will take people away from it. I think it kind of takes away from the collegial spirit of Web 2.0, but the authors make a good point. I would say use links in moderation. I've limited the "Blogs I Follow" list on my homepage to three that I find very relevant.

Hallahan (cited in Briones et al, 2011, p. 38) went a step further and developed five measurements of online "organizational public relations."

1. Whether people consider that you (the blogger, for instance) are committed - willing to invest your time and effort in building relationships
2. Interactivity between organizations (or your blog) and "publics" (the individuals and other organizations out there in cyberspace.
3. "Communality" - that is, whether the blogger shares "similar values, beliefs and interests" (p. 38).
4. Trust. According to Hallahan, the blogger must be seen as "believable, competent, reliable, and consistent" (Briones et al, 2011, p. 38).
5. Satisfaction. To what extent does the blog meet or exceed expectations?

What do you think of these criteria? Do you already apply them to your blog? If so, how?

Please note that feedback will be used in a study into the use of social media for development. See the disclosure of study.