If you blog for a pubmedia station — or would like to start — here are a few tips we can recommend. They’re based on what we practiced and learned blogging here at FluPortal.
- Think hard about your blog’s purpose — develop a clear niche and voice.
- Don’t limit your posts to tight finished reporting. You can use your blog to report — by asking questions to solicit story ideas, leads, etc.
- Keep posts concise and scannable. If you don’t hook readers rapidly, they’ll move on.
- Establish a regular blogging schedule. This will let people know what to expect — and increases the chance that they’ll return to your blog.
- Look for leads everywhere online — not just in mainstream media. See our social-media guide for ideas.
- Make post titles literal and Googleable. In other words: use keywords that people are likely to enter in Google searches. This will increase the chance of someone landing on your blog.
- Break up long quotations into small chunks and write into and out of them.
- Use links as footnotes. They’re a really handy way to back up statements you make.
- OK, just use links a lot. Linking out is the generous thing to do. It will also encourage other bloggers to link back to you (which can increase your traffic).
- Attribute photographs, videos, etc. — with links. Use a consistent style for the attributions.
- Use a search box, tags, and categories to help readers find older posts.
- Decide on a commenting policy (and make that clear on the blog).
- Interact with commenters in the comments section — this can help develop a regular community on your blog.
To find details about some of these tips — and some of the difficulties we had with FluPortal’s blog — check out this section of FluPortal’s final report.
