UKOLN is supported by: Using Blogs Effectively in Your Organisation Sharing Best Practices Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Resources bookmarked using ‘ mw2008-blog-workshop ' tag Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using , instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using , instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised.

2 Contents Introduction Case Studies Reasons For Having a Blog Approaches to Providing a Blogging Services What are the Issues? Addressing the Issues Sharing Best Practices: Writing blog posts The readers The funders What Next?

3 Writing: Individual or Team? Individual blog: Single ‘voice’ (can avoid dissention) Build up following “I always find that Feed has something interesting to say” But what if author’s interests change Team blog: Shared workload Multiple ‘voices’ Possible dangers of arguing or blandness Appropriate solution dependent on factors such as the blog’s purpose (e.g. ‘linker’ or ‘thinker’, effort available, etc.) Note approaches taken by CETIS and OSS Watch

4 The Writing Style My approach: Say something new; add some intellectual content Don’t tell people; float ideas & invite responses I am also very interested to hear what UK and other countries are doing with administrative blogs, 2.0 portals and Learning 2.0. Please share your comments here or me. (Michael Stephens) Is Facebook really, as some have suggested, really a passing fad. Perhaps Spain is, as well And I wonder if, on 4 April 1975, anyone would have predicted the growth in Microsoft and when it stopped being dismissed as a fad? Does anyone else have example of blogs being used to provide access to newsletters? Blogs posts from 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2007 Congratulations to HERO for this development. Now how many institutions are configuring their browsers with similar search interfaces for their institutional Web site, I wonder?

5 The Newsletter As A Blog How about providing access to your newsletter via a blog? Workflow processes existRSS for free Comments for free…

6 Promoting Your Blog Technorati: Already described Blog directories: Is it worth it? Which ones? Community activities: Mailing lists, training, etc. (cf JISCMail list) Another approach is to engage with one’s peers: Participate in discussions & mention your blog Give comments elsewhere, which link to your blog And let’s not forget real-world marketing Flyers, business cards, …Videos (YouTube) Blog address in signatures, business cards, etc.

7 Monitoring Monitoring links to your blog can help to identify positive impact or criticisms You can then: Build on the successes Address the concerns This may be particularly relevant to public sector blogs I also have a blogs- impact del.icio.us tag (for impact reports)

8 Ethical Issues What’s wrong with this: “Your blog’s great” “Thanks – so’s yours!” or this: There’s a need to: Avoid annoying your readers by being slimy Falling for automated spam So think: Will readers think “He would say that” Does the spam ring true?

9 The Aggregated Blog UK Web Focus is also available on: MyBlogLog Planet OSS Watch JISC Emerge buzz/members/UKWebFocus/ buzz/members/UKWebFocus/ There are many issues about aggregated blogs: Who does the aggregation? Different voices and opinions Loss of stats (revenue?) Influencing the community No easy answers!

10 Your Advice & Best Practices Comments provided here: Based on UK Web Focus experiences Documented on UK Web Focus blog Not necessarily applicable in all cases What: Wouldn’t work in your environment? Examples of best practices can you provide? Suggest up to 3 top tips to share with others

11 Questions Any questions?