I’m doing a training session on Saturday to advise people who might want to blog.
So far my notes are
1. Set up Blog.
2. Write Blog.
3. ?????
4. Profit
I fear this will not fill the hour.
What should I say to aspiring bloggers to set about inspiring them, (and prevent me from perspiring while their interest is expiring?)
are you fishing for compliments? no fear, just inspire by illustrating your talk with the good, bad and downright weird blogs a you have seen. I am sure that your blogs (and the comments thereon) have more than enough material to fill an hour, or, if you have a large screen/projector, demonstrate with a bit of real time blogging, good luck!
My main advice to bloggers includes:
1. Don’t witter. The camp followers will do enough of that as it is.
2. Be willing as moderator to excise trolls – forgive me if I have the wrong jargon – and objectionable Tories – it’s your blog, you should say, and you should feel free to remove posts that are simply destructive or pointless., and don’t take the argument on. If a Tory genuinely enters the debate on the blogger’s terms, then fair enough and let’s hope the blogger has enough allies to shoot down silly arguments.
3. Blog sparingly, but say something original and thought-provoking when you do
“Little House on The Prairie Advisory -This may come over as just a bit homespun”
In no particular orderand by no means exhaustive (apols if deeply suck eggs)
Write from the heart about something you care about.
Use illustrative pictures sometimes. They add impact.
Be patient. Hits will come of you are any good. I know the purist ethic thing about not needing no steenking hits but it helps to feel there is an audience. If they don’t come then you should face the facts that your prose may be turgid.
Practice by commenting on blogs you already like and let your comments get longer and longer until they are hmmm posts.
Abhor the party line. You are a name not a membership card number. You are more valuable as a critical friend and if this really is citizen journalism, you need to speak truth to power not speak the power’s version of truth.
Tough on trolls, tough on the causes of trolling. It’s your blog , your garden, arbitrary deletion is fine.
Don’t force yourself to write every day. It is not good discipline, it just makes you stale.
If however the muse strikes and you have multiple posts, consider saving drafts and posting them on successive days when inspiration fails to strike.
Copyright notices (not that anyone seems to take any notice at all)
Have an e-mail address on the blog so that lit eds and agents can contact you about your brilliant musings.
Don’t expect to make any money from blogging. Very few people do and either
a)their names are Iain and Paul. or
b) they are bought and paid for by a media company or a political party.
Engage with your commentators and go to where your posts are being discussed. Then discuss and debate them in person. It gets you known and mentioned in the blogosphere. (Unless you come onto somebody elses blog waving tablets of stone and claiming ex-cathedra authority)
You never really know what the popular posts will be. I thought “The Survival Guide For Decent Folk” was a piece of throwaway sarcasm. It went viral. I doubt many people read the posts I was happiest with.
Get a spell checker (wince)
Have a visual identity that makes your page look like home. I used the Peter Lorre picture with all the fingers pointed. It felt right.
WordPress works for me
Good luck.
TAFKA NJ
Ta NJ – That’s brilliant. I may just steal that wholesale. (and Dan’s and Warriets too).
Though I question about trolls – I’ve generally had a laissez-faire attitude in the comments, which ahs lead to the comments occassionally being a bit vituperative and also more right wing than me. I’ve only really intervened when people have been abusive though.
Mostly I’ve thought that the cost to the blog of cutting people off would be greater than the cost to the blog of letting people run free. Mostly, people seem to respond well to the gentler treatment and begin to actually engage (I’m thinking of people like Bert here), but perhaps I’m just lucky? I don’t get that many comments compared to some similarly sized blogs though, I suspect because the posts are long.
Your blog Hopi, your rules. I had a very arbitrary approach to deletion. People got to wield the green biro a couple of times only before I asserted editorial judgement.
I find it hard to comment often because your posts are so measured, reasonable and well argued . I suspect it is the same for many readers although it may also be because nobody understands them……;)
I was banned from Liberal Conspiracy basically for not agreeing . Seems a contemptible thing to do to me but more importantly what you say and how you act bodies forth your vision.
If it only works if some people get packed off somewhere chilly then it doesn`t work well enough for this country.
Imagine what the Britain would look like if it was run by Sunny Hundal ? ..
Lots of very good tips in your post NightJack. I especially like the one about abhoring the party line. No one can ever agree totally with everything their preferred party does or proposes to do. A good example of this is the case of Ed M being foisted upon the Labour Party, as leader.
No amount of towing the party line and posting comments supporting his leadership by Labour Party sycophants will change the fact that in my opinion and many many other peoples opinion that this bloke is not up to the job. I don’t think that it is being dis-loyal by stating the blindingly obvious. In fact I think it is more dis-loyal to the party by supporting him! Thankfully Labour have now got a credible Shadow Chancellor. In order to be a credible opposition and prospective government it is essential they have a leader who will appeal to the majority of voters who mostly favour the centre ground of politics. The lurch to the left under EdM and EdB will not win a general election. The only choice of leader at the moment to get Labour back in a position to win a general election is David Miliband, the acceptable face of Labour.
I recommend forcing yourself to write in the early days. I never feel the urge to blog for the sake of it, but without getting into a rythym, you can fall off.
“Stats are not important.” Repeat the mantra three times each morning, and then check your stats regularly anyway, they can often be a little ego boost that keeps you going.
Comment lots, get combative but learn the rules of honest and dihonest argument. Learn how to spot ad hom, begging the question and non sequitor.
Learn what “beggin the question” actually is, and never, never confuse it with “asking the question.” (The bloggers you will engage with are pedants, getting these things wrong will detract from your post and likely sidetrack any subsequent discussion). Also spellcheck.
Make friends with other bloggers you like by leaving complimentary comments insterad of just thinking, “hmm, yeah.” You will grow a network and gain links, links are what you want.
If you are proud of a piece, try and get it a large audience, e-mail Liberal Conspiracy, or Left Food Forward or ConHome etc. and try to have as big an impact as possible. A little self-promotion is okay. A lot of self-promotion is annoying, but can get results.
Experiment with your theme a lot initially and get one you actually like, nobody likes to visit a blog and see a new vista every few weeks. Its confusing (am I a simpleton?).
If real life gets in the way, just blog less, don’t feel guilty and post tosh.
Oh and most imporantly…
Read MY blog and copy everything I do because its great (develop an ego, that helps blogging too).
Very good.
Welcome to Hopi’s crowdsourced blogging 101 class.
Teach them to care and not to care. Care enough that you don’t post the first gibberish that spews from from your fingers. Don’t care so much that you are so paralysed about responding yet again to a news story instead of having an original thought, terrified that your mistakes are so obvious no one will bother pointing them out, worried that it’s not allowed to comment on an issue unless you’ve researched it for your doctorate or flummoxed about how you could rewrite into a diamond that you can’t click on post.
Also to engage with your readers and commenters (not the same thing) beyond whacking the trolls. Mix it up. Have competitions, open threads, respond now and then, promote comments, make the regulars feel proud.
Finally, that as with any writing the two most important things are to read widely and well and outside your own field, and to make sure you do it regularly. If you really have nothing to say, draft it instead of posting, but don’t hang around waiting for inspiration to strike.
Advise them not to become enraged by old codgers who leave facetious comments.
here you now have enough for an hour
If you’re happy to take advice from those horrible Lib Dem folk they put together a good blogging guide here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24979240/Blogging-Guide
It’s useful for getting people into a casual style of blogging and then moving on.
Thanks, mostly, Thomas
I think it’s fairly obvious if someone has to go to a “how to write a blog” training session (wtf??) – they ain’t really going to make it as good bloggers, are they? I mean, how many published authors have attended “how to become a published author” seminar? I’ll wager precisely zero.
> zero as many published authors eke out their rarely massive book earnings by presenting “how to do it” courses to wannabes, some of whom go on to be published in their right
Two Booker Prize winners did a course in creative writing…
HS (as AC would say) – I hope your training session went well, I’m sure you will be asked to give another one, so I will stick my tuppenceworth in belatedly. I started blogging at the end of last year on Blogspot, so far just under 30 posts and getting on for 200 hits. Not a great success, but at the start I decided that I was doing it for myself and the challenge of turning out short informative pieces about things I think might be of interest to someone else. So far I can only offer the following: there are more readers in the US and in Singapore than I would have expected (it can’t be just a population thing) and fewer in the UK – is this because it’s Blogspot?; politics and economics seem to be much more of interest than the arts or science; I set up @westindep on twitter to inform an expectant world about postings – some people seem to have a twitter-centred view of the web, maybe a presence on facebook would complement the blog as well?
If you do look at my blog, I’m afraid its political views are a bit nearer the right than yours, without being totally feral, I hope!
I’ve been experimenting with twitter to mixed success. I , and others, must find it annoying after posting the same link to a new post tens of times.
However, I have had some success with blogs like Conservativehome , order-order and the likes of UKuncut linking some of my pieces. Some journos like John Rentoul are very engaging with blogs, and I have found by posting on other sites, in my case Labour-Uncut, you build you blogging presence.
Besides that, I reiterate the other points of quality writing, commenting plus I think the time and particular day you realise a post must be relevant. After I released an EMA post during the debate was at its height gaining 2.5k views.
I found this discussion very useful and I’m looking forward to putting into practise some of this useful advise.
What I’m learning about my own blogging is to be yourself. Write in your own style. You will be who you are anyway and will leak onto the page like so much ink, so you might as well make a virtue of it.