Very cool and it is about time. Although I do have a few misgivings about the blog itself, and this is stuff that can easily be fixed. First, there needs to be an RSS feed for the thing. I continue to see companies make this mistake, and it is just a simple little deal that makes a blog more useful. Guys like myself hunt for RSS feeds to put into our readers, and if you don’t have one then we just kind of forget about your site.
Some other ideas is to have a moderated comments section. If you check out my comments section on this blog, you will see that folks have the choice of entering a name and email, or signing in using Twitter or Facebook. This is the way to go, just because the easier it is for readers to sign in, the easier it will be for them to interact on the site. I use Intense Debate, but there are others out there.
Which is the other thing that kind of strikes me here. Who is the author? Is it Ashley Burke, the media relations person or who? So definitely sign off on who wrote the posts, and most of all, get that individual to interact with the readership. Especially if the CEO writes a post. Blogs are great tools for interacting with your readership. And the best thing with moderated comments, is that you can filter out those who have no interest in having a reasonable conversation or who are spammers.
Some technical issues would be to have a more complete site map at the footer, and have clear links going to the DynCorp corporate page, and clear links going to the blog. So really make it easy for the reader to know where they are at, and give them a map and clear signage as to where to go throughout your websites. An archives is important to, and put a search box on there so folks can search through your posts. Also, I did not see any tags, and that isn’t cool. All of this stuff is important to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and if DI wants to own the story about the ‘their’ company, then they need to do the things necessary that pleases Google Search.
Which along those lines, DI should also set up an official Twitter and Facebook Page. Even a Linkedin Page would be cool, although they might already have that. Either way, get hooked up on all the top social networking sites, and then link all of them together so that every time you make a post on the blog, the post automatically goes to those sites. Google Search really likes that kind of stuff, and it will help in SEO. You would really be top notch if you linked your jobs to all of those sites, and put a RSS feed on your career section. That way, as soon as new jobs come up, folks can find out about them and jump on it. (US Training Center has an excellent jobs section, that has all of the important information and tools that job seekers like) Oh, and don’t forget about a newsletter or some kind of subscription service. Those are very easy to set up using stuff like Feedburner or whatever.
Just some ideas, and it’s a step in the right direction guys. It is also a challenge to the other PSC’s and PMC’s in this industry. If DI has a blog, where is your blog? –Matt
About Inside DI
June 10, 2011
Learn more about the people of DynCorp International, our most recent company news, key contract wins, the causes we support and other fun facts.
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