A Beginner’s Guide to Bloggingfor researchers

Dr Helen WebsterResearcher Development

Online Resources

•This session is associated with STEMDigital, a blended learning programme. The programme blog is at http://stemdigital.wordpress.com/

•The slides are online at http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster/

•If you’re on Twitter, please livetweet! #STEMDigital

What is a blog?

Definitions and characteristics please!

It may be obvious, “common knowledge” now, but forgetting the difference between a static,

broadcast web 1.0 webpage and a dynamic, interactive, conversational web 2.0 blog post is

what makes for a bad blog…

Reading Blogs•Who here reads blogs?

▫What sort? (hobbies, professional, etc)▫How do you find them?▫How do you know what’s posted on them?▫How do you read them (how long, how

much etc)▫What makes a good blog?

• Everyone: what sort of blog would you like to read? How would you read it?

Consuming blogs•It’s important to read blogs because:

▫You get to know what works (and doesn’t)▫You get to know typical reader behaviour▫You get to know other bloggers – at its

best, blogging is a reciprocal conversation▫They’re interesting! And might provoke

thoughts for you to write about and link to in your own blog…

Who here blogs already?

Blogging motivations

So why do you want to blog?

▫What are your top 3 aims?▫Who are your top 3 intended audiences?

▫What are your top 3 topics?

What *exactly* do YOU want to get out of blogging?

It’s quite a time investment…. So what would make it worth it for you?

•Idealistic… •Professional…•Personal…

Other than research, what could you share?

Core researc

h

Profess-ional

activities

Teaching

Adminis-

tration

Impact

Publish-ing

What would be useful to your readers?Why?

Analysing blogs

•Vanessa Heggie, Guardian•Athene Donald•LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences•Cambridge Science Festival•Cambridge Centre for Health Sciences Re

search•Ben Goldacre•Ten essential qualities of science bloggers•The Periodic Table of Elements

Analysing blogs

•Pick a blog:▫What is the type of blog – purpose and

audience?▫What features and widgets does it have?▫What style is it written in?▫Do you find it engaging? (or: might its

intended audience find it engaging?)

Planning a blog• Refine your audience: “academics” or “the

general public” isn’t specific enough!• How big a readership do you want?• Why would it be useful for your intended

readers?• What type of blog will it be?• What exactly would it focus on? List as many

‘categories’* of blog post as you can for that topic• Time: How long will it last? And how frequently

will you post?• How will you publicise it?• What style guidelines will you set yourself?

Types of academic blog*Audience Genre Purpose

Academic-Peers-Project Closed Community Communication skills

Academic-Peers-Field Academic-Research Disseminate to Community

Academic-Students Academic-Process/experience Feedback on Work

Academic-General Academic-Service Creating communities/contacts

General interested public Educative Increases employability

General disinterested public

Aggregator or Digest Stepping stone to new job

Potential Employers & Googlers

Practical Providing a service

Misc Creative Disseminate beyond Community

  Institutional-Misc Funding body required

  Institutional-Calendar Personally useful exercise

    Political

*Source: Vanessa Heggie, Blogging workshop, HPS Cambridge

What to post about?•For your intended blog, jot down at least

TEN ideas for posts:▫Titles▫a brief note of what each one might include▫Category and Tags

•Review these: are they too large? can you break each one down into more posts or suggest other takes on them?

Types of post• You could vary between:

▫ Instructional tips and how-to▫Explanation and information▫Reflection▫Advice and problem-solving▫Editorial commentary on a news story▫Account of an event e.g. conference▫Some ideas in draft for discussion▫A review of an article or book▫A discussion prompt▫Top ten list▫Curation of other people’s material▫A series of posts on a topic

Blogging style•A blog is NOT an online journal article; it

is a different genre with different writing conventions:▫Snappy title (will also be URL)▫Conversational, personal tone▫‘Shorth’ – 600 words (1000 MAX and

RARELY)▫Hypertext links instead of footnotes and

references▫Multimedia – embed images, video, sound,

slides, documents….▫Scannable – no large blocks of dense text

Practising your style

•Take one of your ten ideas for a blog post•Write ca. 300 words in a suitable style

and tone•See what others think – is it engaging and

accessible? (try reading it aloud as if you were chatting to someone – if it sounds odd, the tone may be too academic!)

Choosing a blog platform

•Wordpress.com (lots of functionality and possibility to customise it)

•Blogger (from Google – integrates with your other Google tools. Easy to use)

•Livejournal (often associated with fandom)

•Tumblr (in between a blog and a microblog – good for getting used to posting short things or commenting on media you’ve found)

Embedding media

• You can link to other media, but it’s better to embed it in your blog:

• Images• Video• Slides and slidecasts (Slideshare)• Audioclips and podcasts• Documents (Scribd)

These might be ‘grey literature’ offcuts, things you’ve produced specially, or material by other people.

Publicising your blog•Win a ‘Following’:

▫Blogs are a kind of social network. ‘Follow’ other blogs, comment on them, reblog or retweet them, etc. Add a ‘blogroll’ to your blog.

▫Make sure you have a ‘Follow’ button on your blog so people can subscribe!

▫Embed it in your social networks. Update on other social networks that you’ve written a new post (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)

▫Invite and reply to comments. Invite guest posts. Blog as part of a community

▫Write for a small, concrete, known audience in the first instance. On that point…

Start small

• “projects that will only work if they grow large enough generally won’t grow large; a veritable natural law in social media is that to get to a system that is large and good, it is far better to start with a system that is small and good and work on making it bigger than to start with a system that is large and mediocre and working on making it better”

Clay Shirky (2010), Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

Publicising your blog:

• Serendipity, searchability and shareability

▫People may only stumble across a post by accident (and may only read one post – that’s ok!)

▫Think carefully about your metadata – the title of your posts, but more so CATEGORIES TAGS

▫Add links to other sites, especially other social media sites (and blogs) and ‘authority’ sites

▫Add ‘share’ buttons to your blog if not already there

▫Post regularly to stay high in Google’s rankings

Measuring success

•Use the built-in analytics•Embed Google Analytics •Track others who’ve linked to or

commented on your blog posts

•…but what does success mean to you? A successful one needn’t mean thousands of readers!

Blogging concerns and pitfallsWhat are your reservations about blogging as an early career researcher?

• IP: People ‘stealing your ideas’• Blogging as a bar or distraction to publishing• Legal: libel, breaking copyright• Getting into disputes• Trolling, Flaming, Spamming• Time management• Not being taken seriously by senior academics

It’s a issue of risk management: how likely are these things to happen? And can you take sensible steps to prevent them?

Too much effort?

•Consider:

▫Writing guest posts on other people’s blogs

▫Starting a group blog (good editing experience!)

▫Vlogging▫Writing shorter posts!

Other types of blog

Limited audiences:

•Reflective blogs (may be private)•Drafting blogs (often private)•Update and news blogs for a project (for

funders/stakeholders)

Static blogs•Professional profile (more flexible than

LinkedIn, may still have a blog element)

What next?

•STEMDigital post on blogging – comment, tell us about your blog and your experiences!

•How to build a network: look out for Module 2 of STEMDigital, including Ten Days of Twitter, starting soon!

•Build a community of science bloggers at Cambridge

www.STEMDigital.wordpress.com