{"id":488,"date":"2013-04-03T20:29:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T04:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/?p=488"},"modified":"2013-04-08T21:58:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T05:58:56","slug":"best-practices-for-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2013\/04\/best-practices-for-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Practices for Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/2013\/01\/09\/a-to-z-of-social-media-for-academics\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/social-media-tree-small-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"social-media-tree-small\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-489\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/social-media-tree-small-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/social-media-tree-small-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/social-media-tree-small.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I agreed to teach a session on &#8220;Best Practices for Blogging.&#8221; In case others are making these kinds of presentations, or other libraries are just now starting blogs (hey, we have a couple of new blogs, so surely others must, too, right?), I thought I&#8217;d share the best practices I&#8217;ve pulled together and leave the floor open for others to comment and add theirs.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m focusing this talk on blogs <em>by library staff<\/em>, <em>for patrons<\/em>. But these best practices are also applicable to other kinds of blogs (and, arguably, I should follow more of them, here). <\/p>\n<p>Also, I&#8217;m really not claiming to be any kind of librarian blogger expert. I&#8217;m just a lady who has written some blog posts for a few different audiences, over time, and has learned some lessons (and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/ALAthinkTANK\/461078210631671\/\" title=\"ALA Think Tank thread\">asked<\/a> for others&#8217; lessons, too). These are tips I&#8217;ve picked up, or borrowed from other bloggers. You&#8217;ll pick up other best practices of your own, as you blog.<\/p>\n<p>Without further adieu, some best practices:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Blogs are social. Don&#8217;t think of your blog as a broadcast medium, or your posts as press releases. The best blogs are part of a conversation\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthey either start a new conversation, or they add to an existing one.\n<ul>\n<li>Follow other people&#8217;s blogs. If they write about something that interests you, or that might interest your audience, write a post with your thoughts about it. Be sure to link back to the post that got you thinking.<\/li>\n<li>When you&#8217;re not joining an existing conversation, try to write blog posts that are conversation starters.<\/li>\n<li>Reply to comments when you get them. If your reply takes the form of another blog post, that&#8217;s fine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Know your [intended] audience &#8211; any time you&#8217;re writing content, having a particular kind of person in mind will help you write something accessible and interesting.<\/li>\n<li>Know the primary purpose of your blog &#8211; to educate, to entertain, to share news?\n<ul>\n<li>Have a purpose for each post you write, too (hopefully contributing to the blog&#8217;s overall purpose!) &#8211; Don&#8217;t blog just to blog; make posts that are worth your readers&#8217; time.<\/li>\n<li>Always include <em>Who<\/em>, <em>What<\/em>, <em>Where<\/em>, <em>When<\/em>, <em>How<\/em>, and most importantly <em>Why Should You Care?<\/em> in each post.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Have a personality. Let a little bit of yourself into the writing. (Or a lot!)<\/li>\n<li>Write about topics that interest you. Your audience won&#8217;t be interested if you aren&#8217;t interested.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t use acronyms or jargon; if you can&#8217;t avoid using them, at least explain them.<\/li>\n<li>Use good grammar and spelling.<\/li>\n<li>Keep your sentences short and simple.\n<ul>\n<li>Your posts, too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>If you can tell a story, do it. People love stories.<\/li>\n<li>Add an image (or video) to every post, if possible; making the post visually interesting is a nice thing to do for your reader.\n<ul>\n<li>If you&#8217;re taking an image from another website, download it to your computer, and upload it to your blog. Don&#8217;t just &lt;img src&gt; it from its home server. That&#8217;s rude.<\/li>\n<li>Always give proper attribution for images that you use. You can do that via a caption, or you can link to the source with the picture itself.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some things I&#8217;ve seen go well in library blogs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Reference question of the week<\/li>\n<li>Staff profiles &#8211; Get to know your librarians<\/li>\n<li>Trivia (once you have enough of a following that people will participate)<\/li>\n<li>Exciting resources or services (with reasons why they&#8217;re exciting)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m considering borrowing from <a title=\"Michael Starks' Blog Writing Workshop\" href=\"http:\/\/www.webjunction.org\/content\/dam\/WebJunction\/Documents\/webjunction\/Blog-Writing-Workshop-for-Librarians-Michael-Starks.pdf\">this<\/a>, a bit. And maybe <a title=\"Steele &amp; Greenlee - Thinking, Writing, Sharing, Blogging: Lessons Learned  from Implementing a Law Library Blog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aallnet.org\/main-menu\/Publications\/llj\/LLJ-Archives\/Vol-103\/2011-01\/2011-6.pdf\">this<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some blogs for inspiration (I hope to find more examples before Tuesday&#8217;s session):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/barcorefblog.blogspot.com\/\">Barco Law Library<\/a> &#8211; Seems a little dry, at first glance, but they have 66 subscribers in Google Reader alone. Clearly, they&#8217;re doing something right.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lib.ncsu.edu\/rss-feeds\">NCSU&#8217;s many blogs<\/a> &#8211; Lots of content here.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ugalawlibrary.wordpress.com\/\">UGA Law Library<\/a> &#8211; Fewer subscribers, but I found their content interesting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I agreed to teach a session on &#8220;Best Practices for Blogging.&#8221; In case others are making these kinds of presentations, or other libraries are just now starting blogs (hey, we have a couple of new blogs, so surely others must, too, right?), I thought I&#8217;d share the best practices I&#8217;ve&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2013\/04\/best-practices-for-blogging\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Best Practices for Blogging<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,28,41,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication","category-librarianship","category-talks","category-web-2-0","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}