Blogging 101: A little help?

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m spending some time with members of our features staff to talk about some of the principles of good blogging. It’s a mix of how-to and why-to. Here’s the rough sketch of what I plan to cover, but I know there’s lots of stuff I’m leaving out. All suggestions welcome.

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A blog is just a publishing platform.

There’s no dark magic that forces you to wear pajamas and rant.

Our news report online is a blog.

It abides by all the ethical guidelines that govern our news report in print.

Our business and sports reports online are blogs.

Ditto for them.

But platforms have different strengths and weaknesses, and that’s what we’re here to talk about today.

Print is really, really good at displaying text and pictures.

It’s a great medium for readers, people who want to absorb and think.

It’s an intimate medium — one paper, one reader at a time.

It’s one-way: We present the content, and the reader consumes it.

Online is different.

It’s about conversation.

It’s not one-way. It’s not even two-way. It’s wide open.

It’s built on links.

The link is the essence of the web. If you remember one thing today, remember that.

One way to think about this is to imagine yourself at a cocktail party. Big, deep, strong drink with a little umbrella, walking around and talking.

You talk to Peggy and she’s got something really interesting to say about some behind-the-scenes intrigue at NJPAC.

Another friend walks up and you say, “Hey, you’ve got to hear what Peggy just told me.”

That’s a link.

Then that person tells someone else, that person tells someone else, and little conversations break out around the room, little threads spinning off what Peggy said.

That’s the web. That’s the power of the link.

The link is the way those conversations happen, the way people talk to each other.

And if you strip away all the technobabble b.s., that’s what the web is: People talking to each other.

So you want to go into this with five things in mind:

1. Be conversational.
2. Engage.
3. Link
4. Link
5. Link

Some people will ask, why should I link out and send people elsewhere?

The short answer is: Links out = links in.

Want evidence? Here it is.

So why is that true?

Because bloggers are always looking to see who is linking to them — we’ll cover a couple of ways to do that — and because links are personal and bloggers tend to link back to people who link to them. You’ll do it, too, I promise. It’s how conversation works in real life, and it’s how it works on the web.

So that’s the opening bit. Now, here’s what we’re going to talk about today:

1. Basics of Movable Type.

2. RSS reader.

3. Google blog search.

4. Technorati.

5. Some tips on what makes a good blog post.

6. Comments, on your blog and others’.

7. Social media.

Basics of Movable Type

Title

Categories, tags

Byline

Body text

Block quotes

Pictures

Videos

Trackbacks

Published/Unpublished/Schedule

SEO on headlines and body type, photos and videos

RSS reader

There are lots of choices out there, but let’s focus on Google Reader.

1. How to sign up.

2. How to subscribe to feeds.

3. How to read, share and star items.

4. Point out the Google Blog Search feed in my Reader.

Google blog search

1. Show how it works.

2.  Put “link:http://www.theexplodingnewsroom.com” into the search and generate results.

3. Subscribe to the RSS feed (in the left rail) via Google Reader.

Technorati

1. How to sign up and claim your blog.

2. Authority: what is it?

3. How to keep tracks of links to your blog.

4. How to search what’s hot on the web.

Some tips on what makes a good post

Craig Stolz

Bill Dunphy

Comments

1. Engage your readers. Respond to every comment if you can. Hoist comments when appropriate.

2. Comment on other blogs. Use your real name with a link back to your blog.

Social media

Blogging is a social experience, and we should extend that into other social media. Every social media platform offers tools for expanding your reporting, your sources and your audience.

Here are three worth playing around with:

Twitter

Friendfeed

Facebook

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That’s what I’ve got so far. I should probably mention analytics, too, but what else?