© Theodore Odeluga 2009
The blog has become the next stage on from the standard website – a more personalised expression of online information. As a member of the new generation of online applications that define the web 2.0 family, the blog is one of the engines of change in our rapidly evolving social network ecosystem. Everyone seems to be writing one and rightly so, the internet is the tool of democracy where giving individuals the chance to bring their thoughts and views to a wider global audience is the standard.
The animal we call the blog seems to have developed into two specific breeds: the opinion driven version – dominated by the singular point of view of its author and the news driven entity, powered by the authors desire to keep an audience up to date on a particular subject.
There are a myriad of variations in between of course and the two are often combined. So what’s the experience of the individual blogger? Well, it’s a triumph to reach the stage where you’re ready to get something published but after the first edition of your ongoing contribution to online literature, there comes a point where your routine output runs the risk of becoming dull to read as well as boring to write.
As the experience has always been for good old fashioned journalism, the public’s never ending thirst for information means there’s a constant pressure to crank out something compelling and worthwhile. This is where the real work as it were comes in for the blogger.
Indeed, one could add that the more regularly a blog is updated, the more important it is to have some kind of system to keep it fresh, interesting and current. So where do we start? Let’s first look at the opinion driven blog.
Generating new content for this type of writing would involve research into topics which provoke a reaction (if an opinion is worth anything it has to challenge other opinion, or else a blog is just another talking shop as opposed to a robust platform for debate).
The ‘research’ doesn’t need to be long and drawn out or of any exceptional depth but the information gathered would need to act as a stimulus for what the blogger would turn into the next entry.
Such a stimulus could come from online and offline news articles, discussions at forums or even discussions in the office or pub. It would also be useful for the author to follow the age old practice of keeping a notebook to hand (or the modern equivalent of carrying some kind of portable data management tool). Should good ideas come unexpectedly, there needs to be a way of recording them quickly.
Another useful approach would be to set up RSS news feeds in the author’s internet browser or directly on the page of the blog itself. As well as automatically keeping the blog up to date, this would provide some inspiring substance for new writing.
Yet another approach would be for the blogger to set up a dedicated inbox for news alerts sent from various sites whenever breaking news was generated.
This would save time from having to constantly hunt around the web for stories – it would be a case of letting the stories come to you as it were rather than vice versa. This doesn’t mean search engines wouldn’t be a useful resource however. It should pay to spend some time thinking of useful search strings and phrases to enter into the Google search bar and others to come up with sites containing valuable content.
To save time in future, one could book mark sites of particular interest. As with the opinion driven blog, these techniques would be useful for the type of blog keeping readers up to date on something topical or constantly changeable.
The starting point of the new entry might be to consider the implications of a new development in the blogs subject. Let’s say the subject of the blog was current affairs and the author was presently concerned about the state of the world’s economy.
The author might read the editorial comments of various newspaper editors and consider their opinions first before weighing in with their own. They might simply choose to attack common wisdom or to spend time analysing existing views in detail to later debunk them –or even agree with them –as long as the result got a reaction from the audience. There’s nothing more disheartening than spending time writing something only to see the spaces for comments and feedback completely empty afterwards.
Another example might be say, a blog about new technology. This would similarly put forward an informed but provocative opinion about a particular product or service –either good or bad –to turn into a discussion. The throwing of comments back and forth would keep the audience interested and inspire the next entry.
In conclusion, the key to creating stimulating content is to have as many channels of information as possible. Ideas lead to ideas and the more detailed and intriguing those ideas, the more compelling are the results in the finished product –your latest blog. This is the way that a blogs audience is retained, expanded and the life of the blog made long and healthy, which at the end of the day, is precisely what you want.