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!
- 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.
- 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.
- Be sure to share your posts on Twitter, and use something
like Bufferapp to schedule tweets too: http://bufferapp.com
- 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.
- Always add keywords/tags. Try to make these consistent over time.
- Know your audience – what makes them tick?
- 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!
- 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.
- Weblinks are good.
Readers want to know where they can find more.
- Don’t try to write a scholarly essay, and keep the
blogposts a reasonable length.
- 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”.
- 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.
A couple of weeks ago, the Whittaker Library shared some helpful tips for our first and second year music students here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. We know you've all been assigned essays, and we're keen to ensure that students are equipped to get the most out of our e-resources - at a time where you need lots of information but may not actually be on campus. We thought we'd share these postings again, so they're easy to find when you need them.
