Cliff Condon, the Forrester VP in charge of research processes, just pulled the trigger on Forrester's new blogging network. I'm very excited about the new platform, for it provides a rock solid foundation for enhancing Forrester's research and service engagement. Let us know what you think!

And while you're thinking, here's what Cliff has to say. 

Hey everyone.  Here it is – Forrester’s new blog network. We made some changes to improve the experience for readers and to encourage more analysts to blog. Feel free to poke around and let me know what you think.

There are a few things I’d like to point out to you:
 

• Everyone’s welcome here.  Forrester analysts use blogs as an input into the research they produce, so having an open, ongoing dialogue with the marketplace is critical. Clients and non-clients can participate – so I encourage you to be part of the conversations on Forrester blogs.

• We still have team blogs focused on role professionals. Our role blogs, such as the CIO blog and the Interactive Marketing blog, are a rollup of all the posts from the analysts serving that specific role professional. By following a role team blog, you can participate in all the conversational threads affecting a role.

• And now we’ve added analyst blogs as well.  If you prefer to engage directly with your favorite analyst, you can. Look on the right-hand rail of the team blog and you’ll see a list of the analyst blogs.  Just click on their name to go to their blog.  Or type their name into “Search”.  An analyst blog is a place for the analyst to get reaction to their ideas and connect with others shaping the marketplace.  You’ll find the blogs to be personal in tone and approach. 

• You can monitor analyst tweets. On role team blogs, you will see the recent tweets on the right-hand rail from analysts serving that role. On analyst blogs, the tweets shown are specific to that analyst.  

• New “Recommend this post” functionality makes it easy to weigh in.  If you find a post useful and insightful but don’t have time to post a comment, simply click “Recommend this post” to encourage others to read it.

• It’s easier to get around overall.  The addition of “breadcrumbs” near the top of the page will allow you to move between blogs in our network more readily.  You can also click on specific categories in the right-hand rail to pull together all the posts on a specific topic, such as “mobile”, from across our blogs.

• Feel free to read our social media policy. You can check out the company’s guidance to employees using social media by clicking on the “Social Media Policy” tab below.

These are just the highlights. You’ll find other functionality like “Polls” and “Most Recommended Posts” as you browse. I hope you enjoy the new blog platform – and continue to enjoy the content.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Cliff Condon