Good Content Management is Good Marketing

i'd like to wholeheartedly thank Erik Deckers for hosting the bloggers roundtable yesterday at the Brugge in Broadripple.  I always get excited when a lot of individuals who I communicate with online get together to talk in person.  One of the interesting conversations we had was about the inclusion or exclusion of comments on your blog.  Kyle Lacy argued that simply by allowing comments and opening the floor for discussion the blog was a success.

What is so great about blogs?  People have been writing down their opinions for hundreds of years.  The result of this can be found in most any library.  A lot of people find it a little boring.  What separates these authors from bloggers is the communal aspect.  Comments!  How many time have you read a blog post and then scrolled through the comments to find that they were far more insightful and interesting than the original post.  That's what happens when people collaborate.  Amazing things happen!

Now, Marketpath's CMS software certainly allows for either inclusion, exclusion, or monitoring of comments.  We provide this as a choice to customers, because we realize that everyone has different needs (using the blog format for news is one example).  Some companies simply blog for SEO.  Should they allow comments?  Why is it so hard to be transparent!?

This is a corporate blog post.  Right now I am writing with the intent that our search ranking will improve and that my customers or future customers will have this content available as a valuable resource AND I DO ALLOW COMMENTS!  If I speak about my opinions on my industry they are just that; opinions.  I am opening a forum for discussion with whomever might read this.  If I'm lucky enough to have a readership, then I owe it to that readership to let its voice be heard.  FREEDOM TO THE PEOPLE!