At the end of last week, I found myself running another half day editorial workshop for people who are or will soon be writing or managing a BBC blog as part of our currently trial. This time I was helped out by Chris Valance from BBC 5Live’s Pods and Blogs who, like the BBC World Service’s Kevin Anderson, gave a presentation on how to find good blogs and podcasts (why? remember the three c’s?).
Anyway, the main message of the session was that blogging is more than just the use of a blogging platform as a content management system. It’s also a technique – the main aspect of which is linking out and engaging with "the conversation".
I’m not at liberty to go into any more detail than that about the actual session but standing up in front of an audience demonstrating some of the techniques used by bloggers, I suddenly realised that I too could make much better use of some of the tools available to me. So here are a few things I intend to do, all of which I think will benefit me as a blogger and you as a reader:
- try to add more links within my posts so that readers who want to find out more can find what they’re looking for – I think this post on noodlepie is a great example of what I’m hoping to do more of
- try to make better use of del.icio.us and maybe embed my tag cloud here so that I can share those links
- make better use of RSS – I’ve always used Safari’s built in reader at home and have now signed up for bloglines and I hope to share my feeds once I’ve added them all
So over to you – is there anything else you’d like to see me change or improve here at cybersoc.com
I think you may be surprised at how effective placing your most recent comments high up in the left or right column of your site might be.
And that’s not because I left a comment a few days ago ;-)
Thanks for the comment(s) Craig. I toyed with that idea for a while but then decided that most of the “conversation” that this blog is a part of happens in the space between blogs – people read something and link to it, then comment in their own blog post. But I’m now starting to get more comments from people who don’t necessarily have their own blog, so maybe I need to revisit this. Thanks for the tip. :-)