the issues

• Before you get started

• Getting started

• Gaining momentum

• Keeping your momentum!

• Stopping

before you get started

• Be rigorous asking the questions:

• “why do we want a blog?”

• would it be better done some other way?

• are we doing this just because we can?

• ...or because someone told us to...?

• Think about developing a pilot:

• a project-based blog with limited lifetime

• no / low commitment

• Be clear about ownership

• Work at the right “radar level”...

• Develop a policy (if this fits with your organisation)

• Think about moderation: the BBC model is good

• Have a workflow, preferably minimal:

• Write, check and publish I like this one

• Write, send to colleague, check and publish

• Write, circulate, sign-off, publish

• Write, circulate, send to committee, wait three months, get sign-off from everyone apart from the Director who is away on holiday, spend time re-developing blogging guidelines, get sign-off from Director who says “blog? what’s that?”, publish just as you reach retirement

before you get started #2

getting started

• Choose your platform

• Buy a domain name if you want..

• ..or extend your existing one (blog. or /blog)

• Do what you can to publicise:

• link from your main website

• link to other blogs

• send a newsletter

• tell your friends and colleagues

gaining momentum

• Participate: embed yourself in the community

• identify and follow other blogs

• get a great feed reader like Google Reader

• Link, a lot, especially to other blogs

• Comment, and use your URL when you do

• Be fairly shameless in self-promoting:

• “I like what you’re saying but over on our some museum blog we’ve taken a different approach..”

• Spread the URL around

keeping momentum

• Use your stats to support what you do

• Use Technorati, Google Blog search, etc

• Start to embed these in people’s lives by reporting

• Make sure you post regularly, and with high quality:

• Don’t post because you haven’t done one in a while...

• Do post because you’ve got something to say

• If you’re losing momentum, maybe there’s a reason?

• Do some evaluation of your blog: ask readers

• Look for co-authors. You may be surprised!

• if it’s getting stale, try some alternative approaches:

• interviews

• podcasts

• video or other media embedding

• live blogging!

• surveys or polls

• ...be creative, and copy other people

keeping momentum #2

stopping

• develop an exit strategy

• be very clear with your readership: if they are loyal and you have a community, then think about the impact:

• communicate how and why

• talk about the successes

• be positive!

• make sure (see getting started) that you can extract all your content (if you want it!)

thanks

• any questions...?