Creating a blog / Vanessa Lacey

Creating a blog … ten tips Vanessa Lacey, University Library, Tower Project

Choose your blog name carefully!
Don’t choose a common name – there are hundreds of Tower Projects!
Choose a name that describes what you do
Choose name that includes useful keyword

Decide what you want your blog to achieve
Tower Project blog aims to:
Celebrate collections
Engage with collections
Share ideas about books in collections

Give your blog a personality
Decide on style – not easy with a group blog
We deliberately chose a light & bright design - we didn’t want an old-fashioned Victorian look
Images and style set the tone more than text

Use feedback – blog statistics
How many views?
How do users find your blog – Twitter – UL home page- Facebook?
What search terms do they use?
Which are most popular posts?

Use feedback - comments
What a delight!
Looks like an awesome book
Those crazy Victorians!
I love this – it’s so completely bonkers
Allow anonymous comments?
Screen comments before they’re published
Use spam filter for comments

Promote your blog!
Add a Twitter button
Add an RSS feed button
Look at blog stats on how people are finding your blog

Start a conversation
Ask friends/colleagues to comment
Email blog details to relevant teaching/research staff and ask them to comment
Ask experts to post

Don’t over-manage
No fixed rules
Few blogging errors are fatal
Learn as you go
No staff hierarchy – only group dynamic
But some sort of posting schedule helps

Reluctant bloggers
Some people say they can’t:
spell/punctuate
take photos
find appropriate tags
think of anything to write about
But there are ways around this:
get friend to check
use images from Flickr
practice helps
talk to colleagues to develop ideas

Creating a blog / Vanessa Lacey

by Cambridge Librarians' TeachMeet on Sep 28, 2010

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Creating a blog / Vanessa Lacey — Presentation Transcript