Yes the art of blogging turned ten at the end of October and this part of my conversation seems the perfect moment to mention it, as this weeks entry is all about blogging. Last weeks lecture was all about the blog and the increase of the use of the web by the teams behind trade magazines. Our lecturer was Adam Tinworth of Reed Business Information (RBI) he is head of blogging at RBI, has had his own personal blog since 2001 (One Man and His Blog) and is key in preparing RBI’s journalists for change. So I guess there cannot be many people better suited to teaching us about blogging.
Although, is there really an art to blogging that is different from any broadcast media? Adam Tinworth gave us two main principles that a blog must conform to and they were -
1. A blog entry must be interesting.
2. All blog entries had to show the idea of a conversation.
Now his first point is surely an essential idea behind anything that is in the media, I would imagine that no one would consume any type of media if they were not interested. Yet, it is the idea of a conversation that is not always possible in all forms of media all of the time. Radio phone ins, newspapers’ comments pages and letters to editors are all ways of triggering conversation with the media BUT not using the internet. Although I am not naïve enough to think that the Internet hasn’t helped in the conversation with the media and introduced other forms of conversation (such as BBC Have Your Say). I am guessing that one of the most popular blogs at the moment is Robert Peston’s. He is famous for using his blog to break news, which is one of Adam Tinworth’s plus points about a blog. This is where a blog then helps boost traffic for the media outlet. Robert Peston does not really have the space to go into in-depth analysis in his blog but can link to other BBC pages and also to news bulletins.
One of Adam Tinworth’s other main points was that to be successful and popular a blog must find a niche, be enthusiastic and have a vast range of idea within its subject area. He used one of RBI’s most popular blogs as an example if this. Flightblogger gets breaking news from inside the aviation industry. This blog fulfils the three ideas mentioned by Adam Tinworth and proves very popular event thought the niche it’s in is considerably smaller than Robert Peston’s.
Well that’s my blog about blogging, some things don’t change, Shakespeare wrote plays within/about plays (for example A Midsummer Nights Dream) and now I have written a blog about a blog! So happy birthday blogs, the advantages of blogs at the moment are clearly obvious although will they die out? Does it matter the word blog isn't in my spell check? Will they still be around in another ten years? Will I still be blogging then? What (if anything) will replace them? No one knows the answers to these questions and how things will turn out, to use an old fashioned cliché, only time will tell…
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