In blogging terms, right is about two things: the facts and the context. Facts are facts; context is your opinion or the opinion of others, what the situation at hand means to your company and industry, and anything that might matter to your readers. Compiling a full contextual post often means considering topics from a variety of angles. In the beginning of blogging, context was purely about the individual and what he or she thought and how things applied to him or her, but with a business, you need to provide more depth: readers want to know your opinion, what it means to the company, and what it means to the industry. That said, you can provide context in three ways:

• Opinion By providing your or your business’s opinion on a matter, you offer readers your beliefs about what the situation or event or news means. Is it important? Will it change the industry? Is it merely a “good to know” piece of information? Your opinion is key to positioning the situation in your customers’ minds.

• Perspective Perspective is all about stepping back and asking “What does this mean?” as well as “Are we looking at this the right way?” One of my earliest bits of business reporting regarded the Canadian Bre-X gold scandal in the late 1990s, wherein a Bre-X geologist’s fake report indicated that a huge gold deposit was found in the jungles of Borneo. At the time the scandal made the mainstream news, everyone was talking about what it meant to investors and to the gold industry, while I was seeking to lend a different perspective what it meant for trust in Canadian business, and how could such a situation be averted in the future. Perspective is really about taking what is being said elsewhere and asking different questions to provide a different kind of value.

• Meaning Whenever a scandal happens in politics, one of the involved parties’ first responses is “This isn’t important.” While this typically means the scandal is important, it’s also a great example of assigning meaning to a situation. For example, rightly or wrongly, US President George W. Bush wrapped national security, terrorism, and patriotism into one big ball that can’t be undone; whenever anyone tries to challenge one of these, he insists that they must be challenging American democracy and freedom. Hopefully, when you provide meaning, it won’t be in such black-and-white terms; providing the answers to “why?” and “what does this mean?” questions is one of your key responsibilities when blogging to your customers. Blogging is a fantastic platform for communicating with your customers and for getting their feedback. Make sure you write your posts in such a way that both of these can happen, and recognize that going forward with the two paradigms of right and fast will collide, largely with unexpected results.

THE PARADIGMS AT PLAY

Blogs were founded on the value of right. For most blogs, this was about individuals being authentic, and therefore true to themselves but even the earliest blogs sometimes pointed out new stuff as interesting, without necessarily reporting all the facts. In fact, the earliest blogs really didn’t put a lot of value on factual accuracy, at least at the community level. Blog authors obviously weren’t trying to deceive anyone, and they weren’t reporting untruths, but few people questioned what other bloggers wrote. This collision of paradigms between fast and right is a natural byproduct of blogging growing up: as time passes and more questions are asked, people become more cynical and skeptical and start to ask more questions (valuing right) plus, people are looking to get traffic, reputation, and advertising dollars (valuing fast). Fundamentally, the paradigm shift is the result of a movement away from the value of a single person’s truthful (to themselves, at least) account, opinion, and perspective, as well as a complete valuing of relationships and people, and a shift toward truth, security, and integrity (which, without authenticity, is an interesting thing to desire). For your business, this shifting paradigm means that bloggers will have different expectations of you, depending on their perspectives. Some will expect you to comment right away on a new scandal, product, or development, while others will be content waiting for a few hours or a couple of days while you get your facts together. (That isn’t to say that waiting is always the best thing to do.) Ultimately, values will collide in unusual ways, so that saying “valuing right is always best for your company” in the future is a difficult call to make.

Be aware of these shifting paradigms and reader and blogger expectations, and take advantage of them. For example, if your company is facing a major scandal, why not acknowledge it on your blog, updating your readers as events happen internally? Here is an example snapshot of how one of my clients handled a recent scandal using a blog:

Day 1 10:00: Posted acknowledgement to blog. 1:00: Posted about filing of lawsuit on blog. 3:00: Posted (from a trusted source) a denial, promising more details tomorrow after he’d had a chance to go over exactly where the company was at.

Day 2 9:00: Posted detailed overview of what led up to the lawsuit. 11:00: Posted an interview with the individual inside the company who had mishandled the situation (this was not a criminal lawsuit and ended up being a minor civil one). 2:00: Posted an apology to customers, the customer who had been mishandled, and the industry at large.

Day 3 Remained a source of objective news on the subject. This client ultimately tried to balance fast and right. Because this was a lawsuit issue, the company obviously consulted with lawyers at each step of the way, but my clients really, really wanted to maintain a sense of being the first and best place to get information on what had happened, why it had happened, what was going on inside the company, and where this experience was taking the company. A lawsuit is an extreme example, but a good one: if you have to make a choice, you can choose to do both fast and right by making it clear to readers that you’ll be posting more information as you can. Making a time promise is also a good idea, if you can keep it.

RIDING THE TRENDS

It is difficult to say exactly how and when these trends will collide, but the first precursors to that collision are beginning to appear. In many ways, these types of trends are to be expected any time something goes from niche to mainstream growing pains and shifting values always ensue. Thankfully for your business, you can take advantage both of the current focus on authenticity and relationships as well as dedicating resources into the coming trends of timeliness and depth of reporting. There isn’t any reason you can’t ride both of the trends, which will ultimately give you a deeper and more meaningful message in the conversation.

RELATIONSHIPS VS. READERS

When blogging began, relationships were a huge focus. This hasn’t changed much over the years, as bloggers still love to get together, find new blogs, talk to new people, interact with new companies, and generally be social butterflies. However, things have begun to change as the value of the blog becomes less about the actual blogger and more about how many people read the blog.

Some attempts to counteract this trend have been made by blogging’s originators, who try to focus on who is reading a blog rather than how many are reading it, figuring that having 10 “influential” people reading your blog is exponentially more powerful than 1000 “non-influential” folks. However, for most blogs, this argument simply doesn’t hold up, as most blogs don’t have even 10 influential people reading them. This trend has become more and more visible, as high-profile bloggers begin posting their traffic levels publicly and the blogosphere begins to be separated into two distinct groups: those who have (traffic, that is), and those who have not.

Realistically and historically, a mild bit of the class system has crept into the blogosphere. A-List bloggers are the most popular people in any given niche. These people were, almost without exception, the first to start blogging in that niche. Those who started later enjoyed nowhere near the popularity of the A-List bloggers. This class system, though frequently mentioned in the blogging realm, generally didn’t matter much, since even the A-List bloggers valued relationships (even if it was generally with other A-List bloggers). Eventually, B-List bloggers those who were making waves but weren’t really popular enough to be on the real A-List and even the C-List those who had traffic, but weren’t making waves and were not extremely popular were mentioned. In mid-2005, a site showed up claiming to have compiled the definitive lists of A to C Lists; Blogebrity (www.blogebrity.com ). This site was actually meant as satire, but the lists are still posted and remain the closest to any documented blogger class system.

Despite the popularity contest, relationships still do matter to bloggers, and even though the trend toward measuring the importance of a blogger by his or her traffic will likely increase (as people like to measure how important they are), there will continue to be measures taken to “preserve” the blogosphere. Some of this will focus on reminding bloggers and readers what blogging really stands for, and some will focus on defining your own “personal A-List” of people who matter to you. These trends are important for businesses not because a business needs to get sucked into either of these debates, but because these subcultures of people (those who value traffic, and those who value relationship) will visit your blog and will look for signs of whether you measure up in their eyes.