Workshop for Science Early Career Researchers as part of the STEMDigital programme

1. A Beginner’s Guide to Blogging
for researchers
Dr Helen Webster
Researcher Development

2. Online Resources
• This session is associated with STEMDigital, a
blended learning programme. The programme
blog is at http://stemdigital.wordpress.com/
• The slides are online at
http://www.slideshare.net/drhelenwebster/
• If you‟re on Twitter, please livetweet!
#STEMDigital

3. What is a blog?
Definitions and characteristics please!
It may be obvious, “common knowledge” now, but
forgetting the difference between a static, broadcast
web 1.0 webpage and a dynamic, interactive,
conversational web 2.0 blog post is what makes for a
bad blog…

4. Reading Blogs
• Who here reads blogs?
▫ What sort? (hobbies, professional, etc)
▫ How do you find them?
▫ How do you know what‟s posted on them?
▫ How do you read them (how long, how much etc)
▫ What makes a good blog?
• Everyone: what sort of blog would you like to
read? How would you read it?

5. Consuming blogs
• It‟s important to read blogs because:
▫ You get to know what works (and doesn‟t)
▫ You get to know typical reader behaviour
▫ You get to know other bloggers – at its best,
blogging is a reciprocal conversation
▫ They‟re interesting! And might provoke thoughts
for you to write about and link to in your own
blog…

6. Who here blogs already?

7. Blogging motivations
So why do you want to blog?
▫ What are your top 3 aims?
▫ Who are your top 3 intended
audiences?
▫ What are your top 3 topics?

8. What *exactly* do YOU want to get out
of blogging?
It‟s quite a time investment…. So what
would make it worth it for you?
• Idealistic…
• Professional…
• Personal…

9. Other than research, what could you
share?
Core
research
Profess-
ional
activities
Teaching
Adminis
-trationImpact
Publish
-ing

10. What would be useful to your readers?
Why?

11. Analysing blogs
• Vanessa Heggie, Guardian
• Athene Donald
• LSE‟s Impact of Social Sciences
• Cambridge Science Festival
• Cambridge Centre for Health Sciences Research
• Ben Goldacre
• Ten essential qualities of science bloggers
• The Periodic Table of Elements

12. Analysing blogs
• Pick a blog:
▫ What is the type of blog – purpose and
audience?
▫ What features and widgets does it have?
▫ What style is it written in?
▫ Do you find it engaging? (or: might its
intended audience find it engaging?)

13. Planning a blog
• Refine your audience: “academics” or “the general
public” isn‟t specific enough!
• How big a readership do you want?
• Why would it be useful for your intended readers?
• What type of blog will it be?
• What exactly would it focus on? List as many
„categories‟* of blog post as you can for that topic
• Time: How long will it last? And how frequently will
you post?
• How will you publicise it?
• What style guidelines will you set yourself?

14. Types of academic blog*
Audience Genre Purpose
Academic-Peers-Project Closed Community Communication skills
Academic-Peers-Field Academic-Research Disseminate to Community
Academic-Students Academic-Process/experience Feedback on Work
Academic-General Academic-Service Creating communities/contacts
General interested public Educative Increases employability
General disinterested public Aggregator or Digest Stepping stone to new job
Potential Employers &
Googlers
Practical Providing a service
Misc Creative Disseminate beyond Community
Institutional-Misc Funding body required
Institutional-Calendar Personally useful exercise
Political
*Source: Vanessa Heggie, Blogging workshop, HPS
Cambridge

15. What to post about?
• For your intended blog, jot down at least TEN
ideas for posts:
▫ Titles
▫ a brief note of what each one might include
▫ Category and Tags
• Review these: are they too large? can you break
each one down into more posts or suggest other
takes on them?

16. Types of post
• You could vary between:
▫ Instructional tips and how-to
▫ Explanation and information
▫ Reflection
▫ Advice and problem-solving
▫ Editorial commentary on a news story
▫ Account of an event e.g. conference
▫ Some ideas in draft for discussion
▫ A review of an article or book
▫ A discussion prompt
▫ Top ten list
▫ Curation of other people‟s material
▫ A series of posts on a topic

17. Blogging style
• A blog is NOT an online journal article; it is a
different genre with different writing
conventions:
▫ Snappy title (will also be URL)
▫ Conversational, personal tone
▫ „Shorth‟ – 600 words (1000 MAX and RARELY)
▫ Hypertext links instead of footnotes and
references
▫ Multimedia – embed images, video, sound, slides,
documents….
▫ Scannable – no large blocks of dense text

18. Practising your style
• Take one of your ten ideas for a blog post
• Write ca. 300 words in a suitable style and tone
• See what others think – is it engaging and
accessible? (try reading it aloud as if you were
chatting to someone – if it sounds odd, the tone
may be too academic!)

19. Choosing a blog platform
• Wordpress.com (lots of functionality and
possibility to customise it)
• Blogger (from Google – integrates with your
other Google tools. Easy to use)
• Livejournal (often associated with fandom)
• Tumblr (in between a blog and a microblog –
good for getting used to posting short things or
commenting on media you‟ve found)

20. Embedding media
• You can link to other media, but it‟s better to embed
it in your blog:
• Images
• Video
• Slides and slidecasts (Slideshare)
• Audioclips and podcasts
• Documents (Scribd)
These might be „grey literature‟ offcuts, things you‟ve
produced specially, or material by other people.

21. Publicising your blog
• Win a „Following‟:
▫ Blogs are a kind of social network. „Follow‟ other
blogs, comment on them, reblog or retweet them,
etc. Add a „blogroll‟ to your blog.
▫ Make sure you have a „Follow‟ button on your blog
so people can subscribe!
▫ Embed it in your social networks. Update on other
social networks that you‟ve written a new post
(Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
▫ Invite and reply to comments. Invite guest posts.
Blog as part of a community
▫ Write for a small, concrete, known audience in
the first instance. On that point…

22. Start small
• “projects that will only work if they grow large enough
generally won‟t grow large; a veritable natural law in
social media is that to get to a system that is large and
good, it is far better to start with a system that is small
and good and work on making it bigger than to start with
a system that is large and mediocre and working on
making it better”
Clay Shirky (2010), Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and
Generosity in a Connected Age

23. Publicising your blog:
• Serendipity, searchability and shareability
▫ People may only stumble across a post by accident
(and may only read one post – that‟s ok!)
▫ Think carefully about your metadata – the title of your
posts, but more so
 CATEGORIES
 TAGS
▫ Add links to other sites, especially other social media
sites (and blogs) and „authority‟ sites
▫ Add „share‟ buttons to your blog if not already there
▫ Post regularly to stay high in Google‟s rankings

24. Measuring success
• Use the built-in analytics
• Embed Google Analytics
• Track others who‟ve linked to or commented on
your blog posts
• …but what does success mean to you? A
successful one needn‟t mean thousands of
readers!

25. Blogging concerns and pitfalls
What are your reservations about blogging as an early
career researcher?
• IP: People „stealing your ideas‟
• Blogging as a bar or distraction to publishing
• Legal: libel, breaking copyright
• Getting into disputes
• Trolling, Flaming, Spamming
• Time management
• Not being taken seriously by senior academics
It’s a issue of risk management: how likely are
these things to happen? And can you take sensible
steps to prevent them?

26. Too much effort?
• Consider:
▫ Writing guest posts on other people‟s
blogs
▫ Starting a group blog (good editing
experience!)
▫ Vlogging
▫ Writing shorter posts!

27. Other types of blog
Limited audiences:
• Reflective blogs (may be private)
• Drafting blogs (often private)
• Update and news blogs for a project (for
funders/stakeholders)
Static blogs
• Professional profile (more flexible than
LinkedIn, may still have a blog element)

28. What next?
• STEMDigital post on blogging – comment, tell
us about your blog and your experiences!
• How to build a network: look out for Module 2 of
STEMDigital, including Ten Days of Twitter,
starting soon!
• Build a community of science bloggers at
Cambridge
www.STEMDigital.wordpress.com