The what, why and how of blogging as an academic researcher.

1. (Click the image to see just
how much stuff, in real time)

2. Blogs & Blogging
An Introduction for Researchers
Ned Potter

3. Aim of today: explore what blogs are,
why are they are relevant to the HE
context, and how they might be useful
to you.
We’ll be setting up a blog – but this can
be deleted after the session!

4. What are we talking about today:
Blogging is part of social media, which
is part of Web 2.0 – the interactive and
participatory side of the internet.
It’s basically people exchanging stuff
(most often opinions).

5. Please go to bit.ly/york5
and fill out my one-question survey

6. are blogs?
What

7. Blogs are regularly updated webpages,
consisting of posts (articles) on one or many
themes.
They can exist on their own or as part of a
larger (static) site.

8. Blogs are classed as social media - in other
words they're interactive and participatory.
Readers can (usually) comment on the posts,
engage in dialogue with the author, and easily
share links to the blog via Twitter and other
networks.

9. People can either read blogs online like any
other website, or subscribe to the blog to
receive regular and automatic updates,
wherever they see this symbol:
Blogs are (almost always) mobile-ready.

10. There can be individual blogs, group blogs,
departmental blogs, project blogs.
They're written using online software, the
most popular of which are:

11. WhyBlog?

12. WhyBlog?

13. WhyBlog?

14. WhyBlog?

15. It is likely that a larger (and possibly more
varied) audience will see your research if you
or others blog about it.
"...the content of a blog becomes available far faster than
that of a journal article, and is accessible to a wider
audience."
Jenny Davis, Texas A&M University
"Academic blogs are proven to increase dissemination of
economic research and improve impact."
World Bank Senior Economists, David McKenzie
and Berk Özler
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/05/08/the-place-of-blogs-in-academic-writing/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/11/15/world-bank-dissemination/
IMPACT

17. Adrian Miles, a senior lecturer in media and
communications at RMIT… has 1,000 readers
a week for his VLOG 4.0 blog and although he
describes it as “a very small blog”, he
contrasts it with being published in a major
international journal where he says “maybe
100 people would read my article”.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/06/20/academics-blogging-vital-tool-for-academic-communication-impact/

18. 2. Communication
Blogging allows you to
greet the Googlers with
your professional ideas,
views and outputs.

19. 2. Communication
Blogging allows you to
instigate collaboration,
stimulate discussion, share
information with your
peers, engage a non-
academic community

20. 2. Communication
Blogging allows you to
disseminate information in an
informal way, and get
immediate feedback on
potential ideas.

21. 2. Communication
“Blogging forces me to write accessible
content on a regular basis. From a writing
point of view, blogging is like working out a
few times a week. I also just plain like
collecting my thoughts, presenting them
well, and trying to see if I can persuade
people to think differently after reading my
posts than they were thinking before. I
suppose that’s the teacher/scholar in me
coming through.”
Peter Enns, Harvard

22. 3. Teaching

23. Ways to use blogs in teaching?
Provide further assignments for students to work on
Have students work in small groups to write and
post summaries of content covered in class to build
a compendium for content covered over a semester
Use blogs for peer learning. Encourage students to
post comments on each others postings
Use blogs for projects where students need to
include videos, clips, audio, text and images
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/ultimate-guide-to-use-of-blogs-in.html

24. Keyconcepts
defined

25. Post / article: means the same thing – one
update on the blog.
Multimedia: a good thing to include in
blog posts – especially pictures and video
Subscribers: people who regular get
updates from your blog via email or an
online service
Comments: responses to the article,
which the author mediates

28. Time to get started.
Follow the instructions in
the hand-out.

29. Examples

35. Blogging is most effective when you're part of an
online scholarly community, so it's important to
consume as well as create. For which you need RSS
>> It stands for: Really Simple
Syndication. Although the proper
explanation is really anything
but...
Relevant definition: A way to
keep up to date by making the
content come to you: blogs, news
feeds, anything regularly updated
online.

37. Why use RSS?
Subscribing to feeds via RSS funnels all
the things you're interested in (but
might otherwise miss) into one place.
You can sub-divide them into folders
(Must-reads, BL blogs, Technology,
special collections, social media advice
or whatever).
Even once useful articles have
disappeared off the front page of the
sites you value, they're still waiting for
you in your feed-reader.

38. You can also set up alerts
for ego-searches, e.g.
mentions of your name,
your major projects /
articles, or links to your
blog / website.
(via https://www.google.com/alerts)

39. You usually subscribe in a feed reader –
I’d recommend either www.feedly.com

40. Or oldreader.com

41. Try out RSS
Activity B in the hand-
out.

42. well
Blogging

43. well
Blogging
(the style question)

44. Write for the web
From the authors of the successful British Politics and Policy blog:
Academics normally like to build up their arguments
slowly, and then only tell you their findings with a
final flourish at the end. Don’t do this ‘Dance of the
Seven Veils’ in which layers of irrelevance are
progressively stripped aside for the final kernel of
value-added knowledge to be revealed. Instead, make
sure that all the information readers need to
understand what you’re saying is up front – you’ll
make a much stronger impression that way.

45. Keep in mind:
Multi-author blogs are more sustainable, and
have a higher post-rate. The more posts you
have, the more Google searches you show up in,
and so the more views you get..
*Useful* blogs (or blogs with a useful element)
tend to get more interest - I smuggle in
thoughtful posts among the useful posts, to a
bigger audience...
Blogging works best when you write about what
you care about

46. Finding inspiration
Useful posts, inspiring posts
Revealing posts
3rd party content posts
Question posts
Seasonal posts
Updates

47. Encourage interaction
Avoid text-only posts

48. Encourage interaction
Avoid text-only posts
(It’s NOT dumbing down!)

49. Use titles which reveal the
content, rather than obscure it.
Linking to other blogs is the new
referencing...

50. Use titles which reveal the
content, rather than obscure it.
Linking to other blogs is the new
referencing...
(It’s NOT dumbing down!)

51. You need to actually tell people
you’re blogging.

52. You need to actually tell people
you’re blogging.
Blog name and URL on your
business cards
on your PowerPoint
presentations
in your email signature
Tweet about it, feed it into
your LinkedIn profile

53. Comment on
other blog posts.
Write guest posts
for other blogs.

54. Above all:
Make it as easy as
possible for people
to share posts and
subscribe to your
blog.

55. Any questions?

56. Thanks for coming!
Every picture via www.iconfinder.com
These slides are on
www.slideshare.net/UniofYorkLibrary
My blog is at www.ned-potter.com/blog
(although it’s by no means exemplary!)