What Makes A Good Blog? Twelve Tips for Library Bloggers

WHAT MAKES A GOOD BLOG?

We looked at our blog traffic over the past month.  How many people actually visited, and were there any patterns?  Well yes, actually – there were!

1. The bottom line is, you have to keep posting.  If you don’t post, the visitors don’t visit.  The more you post, the more they visit. 
2. Schedule your blogposts! You can schedule in Blogger and Wordpress.  This helps take care of days when you know you won’t be around to post.
3. Be sure to share your posts on Twitter, and use something like Bufferapp to schedule tweets too:  http://bufferapp.com
4. Take care with headings.  Once you’ve uploaded your post, the hyperlink won’t change. So use catchy headings with words that Google can find; you can change the blogpost heading later if you need to.
5. Always add keywords/tags.  Try to make these consistent over time.
6. Know your audience – what makes them tick?
7. Know your product – we’re a library, so our main concern is to promote physical and electronic resources, not to mention our ever-helpful library staff! 
8. In a library context, e-resources attract interest.  So does copyright, interesting new stock, musicians’ health, music competitions, creativity, learning and research skills, and employability. 
9. Weblinks are good.  Readers want to know where they can find more.
10. Don’t try to write a scholarly essay, and keep the blogposts a reasonable length.
11. Have a conversational tone: expressions like “the musicologists amongst us” are not inclusive, and won’t really even attract the musicologists!  You want readers to react with, “Hey, this is for me!”, and not “Oh, stuffy academics again”. 
12. Be the same age as your audience.  No, that’s silly – obviously we’re kidding!  Your audience could be any age.  Students can be any age.  Staff can be marginally older than students, or heading for retirement.  You cannot be the same age as your audience, but you can try to ensure that your posts will appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

The Linen, the Stitch and the Wardrobe - Making an early Victorian Shift

The clever people in the University of St Andrews Library Special Collections are blogging their way through a wide range of historic 'how to' manuals.

This week, it's all about following an early 19th century dressmaking pattern and using a 19th century embroidery manual, to make a simple linen shift.

The Wardrobe Department at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland might be very interested in this, as a creative experiment.  Though I suspect busy costume makers don't have time for Victorian embroidery!!

Take a look at 52 Weeks of Historical How-To's - it's a beautiful and intriguing blog.

Union? Scottish Independence?

No, Whittaker is not entering the debate!  Just sharing with you some historical facts about the Union in 1707, thanks to the National Library of Scotland Rare Books blog!

"Documenting the Union of Parliaments

"The Treaty of Union united the Scottish and English Parliaments in 1707. Pamphlets, poems and proclamations show it was welcomed by some and loathed by others, as this essay explains."  Click here

Effective Use of Social Media

The recent IAML (UK and Ireland) Annual Study Weekend saw a new innovation - the "Quickfire" sessions.  Karen chaired a couple of sessions on effective social media use in music libraries, before she fled for the last Scotland-bound plane of the day.

It's fair to say Karen has embraced social media both on behalf of the Whittaker Library and in her own name, but she restricted her comments to library activities for these sessions.

BLOGGING

This Whittaker Live blog was established in 1999 – there have been changes over the years, most notably abandoning the attempt to find weblinks on weekly lecture topics.  Students can find that for themselves these days!  

Content is drawn from various sources:- stock acquisitions, forthcoming events, links to other relevant postings eg Bibliolore, and news about competitions and summer courses.  

·       It’s possible to schedule blogposts, but we don't generally do so.

TWEETING

Karen tweets as @WhittakerLib by day, and @Karenmca by night.  The @Whittakerlib account is the slightly younger of the two, started because there should be separation between library-related tweets and personal ones.  This is very important, because:-

• It also enables others to tweet.   
• It keeps tweets library-related.
• It enables the library to have its own persona.
• It means non-library related chat stays outside the workplace, and anything connected with Karen's research interests doesn't clutter up the library's message.
• Messages to the Library go to our generic email account, which anyone can access.     

When Karen is using Twitter in her own right, she “favourites” links or RTs them to @Whittakerlib, but she also makes heavy use of Diigo – social favouriting.  This means any interesting links that she finds in her spare time can be saved for use either on the blog or on Twitter next time she's in the library.

DIIGO

There’s a feed from Karen's own Diigo list through to the Whittakerlive blog, but the app enables her to mark as private anything that's not to be shared.  Diigo is excellent for accessing favourites from any device you’re using, and for storing content for future use.

Bufferapp 

This is a great way of scheduling tweets!

FACEBOOK

We don't use Facebook professionally; Karen has chosen to keep her account purely for a handful of family and close friends, and a select few others.  Separation of personal and private is very important indeed, to convey a professional impression.  Having said that, the library’s canvas Wheesht bags did have their own Facebook page ...!

Cold Shivers Down Spine: the end of Librarian Blogging? No, No, No!

Whittaker gaped and stretched his eyes.  What?! Someone is blogging about the end of an era for librarian blogging?  

This is serious stuff!  Read theWikiMan's posting. 

Be reassured.  Whittaker isn't going away any time soon!