“Blogging is pull marketing rather than
push marketing.”
Blogging also lets her educate potential
clients about the real estate industry and
tell them about herself — for instance, her
training in classical music and her former
job as a Husqvarna sales rep. “They feel
they know me before they call me,” she
says. “It personalizes it. You will always buy
from a friend, all things being equal.”
Another kind of blog, the pundit blog
that provides news and commentary, has
wonderful potential, says Philip Meyer ’ 63
(MA), Knight Chair in journalism at
UNC. “They’re very uneven just now. It’s
as easy to put out falsehood as it is truth on
the Internet. But institutions will be developed to manage all that. Some blogs are
turning into what looks very much like
newspapers, for instance Ariana Huffington’s The Huffington Post.”
Consequently, the mainstream media is
losing its exclusive control over the agenda,
Meyer says. “Anybody can put something
on the agenda now if the material is
important enough to carry the freight. The
other thing it’s important to understand is
ERIN SHAUGHNESSY ZUIKER ’03 (MPH)
Anton Zuiker ’04 (MA), shown above with daughter Anna, blogs regularly about his family, his work
and blogging in general. In addition to maintaining several blogs, including mistersugar.com (shown
on opposite page), zuiker.com and blogtogether.org, he organizes local events for fellow bloggers.
that there are legal liabilities for what you
say [on a blog]. You have to tell the truth
— if you defame somebody, you don’t have
a deep pockets institution behind you to
defend you.”
Ed Cone, a pundit blogger based in
Greensboro, believes that bloggers will
change newspapers and television news for
the better. “ ‘We will fact-check you,’ goes
a polite version of the weblog slogan,” he
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