An informal guide to blogs and blogging within education and other public sector organisations

Written for the aspiring blogger,

whether or not you’ve already started blogging

Ray Fleming The Good Blogging Guide Page 2

Contents About the Good Blogging Guide ............................................................................................................. 3

Chapter One – Write for the Audience ................................................................................................... 4

Why “Audience” is key to good blogging ........................................................................................................... 6

Exercise .............................................................................................................................................................. 6

Chapter Two – Have an objective ........................................................................................................... 7

Chapter Three – Getting onto Page One of Google ................................................................................ 8

Search Engine Optimisation for blogs ................................................................................................................ 9

1) Keywords and Key Phrases ........................................................................................................................ 9

2) Make the post title work for you ............................................................................................................. 10

3) Use target keywords/phrases in your post .............................................................................................. 10

4) Get links back to your site ........................................................................................................................ 11

Does this all really work? ............................................................................................................................. 11

Chapter Four – Code of Practice ........................................................................................................... 12

A code of practice for teachers blogging? ........................................................................................................ 12

The Civil Service Blogging Code ........................................................................................................................ 13

Microsoft Blogging Code .................................................................................................................................. 13

The UK Education team’s blogging guidelines ................................................................................................. 14

A Code of Practice for blogging in education ................................................................................................... 14

A call to action .................................................................................................................................................. 14

Using Twitter for engagement in Government ................................................................................................ 15

Chapter Five – No lawyers please ......................................................................................................... 16

Be as personable as you possibly can............................................................................................................... 16

Write the way you speak (and don’t use language to make you look smart) .................................................. 17

Drop the superlatives if they are not deserved ................................................................................................ 18

If it’s confidential don’t write it down .............................................................................................................. 18

Chapter Six – When things go wrong .................................................................................................... 19

Ray Fleming The Good Blogging Guide Page 3

About the Good Blogging Guide

One week in June 2009, I was supposed to be out of the country for a week. But at the last minute the trip was cancelled – leaving me with some free time in my diary.

Which left me with a chance to get around to some of those “I really want to do it but don’t have the time” jobs. And this Good Blogging Guide was the result.

Since the previous summer, when I’d somehow won the Computer Weekly “Public Sector IT Blog of the Year” award for 2008, I’d been asked to run a series of internal, and then external, workshops and been invited to speak at others’ events on my approach to blogging. To be honest, I don’t think I’m an expert (after all, there are plenty of professional bloggers out there that make a full-time living doing it) but on my journey of personal and business blogging over the last six years, I’ve picked up some hints.

This PDF version of the Good Blogging Guide is an edited version of a series of blog posts I created on the subject, and if you prefer to read the online version, and catch any updates since this document, then visit the original at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/pages/the-good-blogging-guide.aspx

Although much of the Guide focuses on the link between blogging and education, it is not specifically focused on the use of blogs within the classroom, although there are sections which may be useful. It is also useful even if you are not actually working in education – I’ve had positive comments from people in other parts of the public sector and business.

I hope you find it useful:

If you do, feel free to share this guide, and the links with others. And let me know your thoughts.

If you don’t, then send me your thoughts – either by email or by adding comments to the blog.

Ray Fleming

Email me at ray.fleming@microsoft.com

And you might enjoy some of my blogs for schools, colleges and universities at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/

http://blogs.msdn.com/ukfe/

http://blogs.msdn.com/ukhe/

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Chapter One – Write for the Audience

When I sit down to blog, I am always trying to write for a specific audience – it’s not about me, it’s about you. I know it may not always seem like that, but the goal for me is to write something that is relevant to the audience I am writing for. This may seem a bit odd – you’re probably thinking “Surely everybody does that don’t they?”, but the reality is that many people blog because they have something to say, and they don’t mind who listens.

But the main blog I write (http://blogs/msdn.com/ukschools) isn’t about me, it’s actually about Microsoft and UK schools, so I’m writing to a specific group of people. Although it makes it easier for me to decide whether something is, or isn’t, relevant for the blog, it also makes it more difficult to write, because each time I’m thinking about how I make something relevant (or more relevant) for the audience.

Enough of the abstract, let me give you an example. Here’s the audience I think about when I sit down to write now:

The UK Schools blog target audience

• Staff working in, or advising, schools in the UK

• Have an interest in ICT, or it’s in their job role

• Probably don’t teach, but will interact with people who do

• Relatively innovative, and like to try new things

• Responsible for making or implementing IT strategy decisions in their schools

• Interested in what other schools are doing

I know, for example, that if I’m going to talk about teaching with ICT, it will be in reference to the colleagues of the reader, not the reader directly (eg I’ll write “Here’s an idea your colleagues might like…” rather than “Here’s something

to try on your whiteboard”)

As a side note, why did I write a Good Blogging Guide for this audience? It’s because more and more of the

people who read the blog write their own blogs, or want to, so that they can share what’s going on in their

school and share their ICT thoughts. And from my point of view, if they’re doing that with Microsoft technology (as they’re likely to if they read the blog), then I’m happy to share!

But there’s actually more to it than that – because the description above is very generic. It could describe lots of people and roles. To be clearer about my audience, I actually try to focus in on a single individual – because if I can make my writing work for them, then there’s a good chance it will work for others who are similar.

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So I’ve refined my description a little further. Let me describe some of the characteristics of the specific person I’m writing for:

I write for a network manager in a secondary school

He’s male, in his 40’s – but 70% of his colleagues are female

He is a full-time ICT person

He has a IT technician who does stuff

He understands ICT better than anybody who works in his school

He’s not a teacher, but he likes to help the teachers in his school

He has a view about the strategic direction of ICT in his school – and he needs the head to give him enough budget to do it

In the summer, while the rest of the teachers are on holiday, he has his busiest month

He gets advice from his local authority and Becta, but not often

He makes buying decisions based on what he reads online, based on what other schools tell him, and based on his fondness for innovation

He reads The Register, EduGeek, the TES ICT supplement and ICT in Education.

He knows what an RSS reader is

He’s responsible for all of the school’s ICT – office and classroom

His school has over 1,000 pupils and 250 computers.

He’s worried that at some point his local authority will take over the school’s ICT system as part of the rebuilding programme, and he will be TUPE’d to a company. He’ll lose control of ICT in his school, and all the good work he’s done will be demolished. So he gets involved with his local authority’s events.

He’s probably developed a bit of software or advice that other local schools use.

Accept my apologies if this description looks sexist – it’s because I tried to focus in on a single description of a person, not a type of person, and in 95% of cases, the person is male!

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Why “Audience” is key to good blogging

The reason that this first chapter is about Audience is because I think it is a key to effective blogging. It means that you can hope to continue to attract new readers, by writing about things that are relevant to them, and avoiding other things. It doesn’t mean that other people won’t find your blog interesting, and you will get readers and subscribers from all over the place. But if you stay focused on an audience, you can avoid annoying the very people you want to serve.

It also helps to guide you with your writing style. For example, if you’re writing for classroom teachers, you may want to avoid being too technical. If you’re writing for parents, then you’d want to avoid too much educational jargon. As I’m writing for a UK-wide audience, I try not to refer to “Key Stages” too much, because that isn’t relevant for Scotland.

And if, like me, you write for multiple blogs, it can help you to avoid obvious mistakes.

As a team, we’ve also used it to spot gaps in our audience. So last year we started a Teachers blog too, which is written to be helpful to teachers who want to integrate ICT into their teaching more.

Exercise

Here’s an exercise for you:

- Can you describe the person who would most enjoy your blog, and get most value from it?

- Are there times when what you write isn’t right for them? (That’s okay, as long as there’s enough

balance)

- If you defined your audience more clearly, do you think there are other things you could also write about that you haven’t already?

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Chapter Two – Have an objective

This is a very short chapter, because there are some very simple rules that you can follow to make sure that there’s actually an objective (or “point”!) to your blog posts. There are two questions that work, whether you are writing a blog post, or a presentation, or letter or any other form of communication.

And the questions are about what you want to happen at the end in the mind of your audience?

What do you want people to think?

What do you want them to do?

That’s it. No magic. I have used this for years – before I sit down and write a presentation, I get a clean sheet of paper and write down 2 or 3 bullet points underneath these two questions. You’d be amazed how easy it becomes to focus on writing your presentation, and also it means that when you’ve finished, you can come back to your piece of paper and check that you’ve hit your objectives.

Sometimes I do this check, and find that I’ve wandered off into writing a completely different presentation, by mistake. Other times, I’ve found that I’ve got 20 minutes to present a one-hour presentation. These questions help me to kill the 40 irrelevant minutes.

This works really well for blog posts too. And it is ideal if you have a vague idea - if you’ve got an idea for a blog post, but don’t know how to approach it.

Or even better, if you’re blogging in an organisation, and you have somebody else giving you blog post ideas which aren’t right for your audience – if they fail the “think/do” test, then probably they aren’t right for your readers.

I quite often use this, because people approach me all the time and say “you should really put this onto your blog”. Sometimes it’s people in positions of authority over me. But the “think/do” test helps me to keep irrelevant stuff off the blog. For example, recently Microsoft won an award for The Best Workplace in Europe. And somebody said “You should blog that”. But given that most network managers work in what could only be described “The xxxxx Workplace in Europe” (choose your own xxxxx word: hottest; most cramped; untidiest; darkest), then unless my ‘think’ objective was ‘jealous’ then it’s not for the blog!

Typical “think/do” examples are:

Think: This is clever Do: Download the software

Think: I can use this Do: Try it in a lesson

Think: This is contentious Do: Add a comment

You may wonder, what was the Think/Do for this chapter?

Think: I want you to think “That’s simple, easy to remember and might work for me”

Do: I want you to “Try it on a presentation and on a blog post, and see if it is helpful”

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Chapter Three – Getting onto Page One of Google

I think this chapter could be a book in its own right – and there are plenty of books which only cover this subject - in fact, there are plenty of companies whose sole purpose is to sell you the answer to doing this. And I know I’m not in their league! So this chapter is about making your blog search-friendly – giving you a few direct tips to make sure that what your write is likely to improve your chances of being found when a potential reader goes to their search engine of choice.

The reason I called this chapter “Page One of Google” is because in the UK today, over 90% of all searches

are done through Google. So being on the first page of another search engine isn’t anywhere near as useful

as being on the first page of Google. Although other countries use a much wider range of search engines, it

appears to be Google all the way in the UK. Which is a little worrying if you can’t get onto Google’s results page – does it mean you don’t exist on the web?

When I first started blogging, I didn’t care about showing up in the search results. I was writing for a few specific people, who knew where my blog was. But over the months, I noticed that more and more of the traffic for my personal blog was coming from Google. They weren’t looking for my blog, but ended up on it.

And it had a very unfortunate side effect when I described a town in Canada in less than glowing terms on my

personal blog, and my reference to it came up as the first link when you searched for the town. Yup – I got an

email from the Chamber of Commerce that time!

Now, when I write I try to think “How can I help people to find the info I’m writing, if it’s relevant?”

This chapter is all about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - an acronym that’s bandied about all over the place. Basically it means the same thing as this chapter title. But there are so many mystiques around it, that I think it’s time for a basic “SEO in plain English” approach.

And it’s entirely my point of view – four basic steps which I’ve boiled down from hundreds of different snippets of advice, and sitting through presentations where seasoned professionals have talked about how to do this stuff. But I like simple things, so I’ve boiled this all down to my four steps for SEO in plain English (hopefully!). You’ll also find

that they are very specific, because that’s the kind of person I am – I like clarity.

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Search Engine Optimisation for blogs

1) Keywords and Key Phrases

I approach this from the point of the reader/searcher, and ask myself “If I was trying to find the information, what would

I type in a search box?”, and then I make sure that I use that phrase in the text. And I do the same for closely related phrases. Let’s take a worked example:

Imagine I am writing about my school’s learning platform implementation

Key phrases people might search on:

• Implementing a learning platform

• How to set up a learning platform

• Guide to setting up a learning platform

So that gives me some phrases that I can use – perhaps using one of them for the title, and other phrases in my writing. But of course, there are plenty of other phrases and words that people might also search on, which I want to use. Things like:

• Learning Gateway

• Online reporting for parents

• Real-time parental reporting

• VLE

• Obviously this list could become quite long!

And finally, a list of verbs that could go with it:

• Training

• Supporting

• Implementing

• Setting up

• Designing

• etc

But obviously, it wouldn’t be sensible to try and include all of this in your blog posting, because it would be (a) obsessive and (b) not helpful to your readers. But the process of making the list might help you to identify a couple of key words/phrases you want to use to help people find your blog post. And you must absolutely make sure that you think about this through the eyes of the reader, not yours. ‘Learning Platform’ is a really good example to use – because you can bet that parents don’t use that phrase, and in fact probably don’t even use phrases like ‘online reporting for parents’. So make sure you get the phrases or keywords that your particular audience uses.

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2) Make the post title work for you

I don’t quite know why, but this simple step seems to work very well.

Your post title should be 60-70 characters long

You should use the key search terms at the beginning of the post

Let’s work an example through this. Let’s take a typical post title from a post on my schools blog in January:

The netbook Wall of Cool at BETT

I need to decide the key search terms, and get them to the front of the post title. I think in this case ‘netbooks’ and ‘BETT’ are probably key – and I think I’d add ‘schools’ too (because if people want netbook info for schools, then I want them to find this post).

My second version is:

Netbooks for schools at BETT on the Wall of Cool

This should help people find the post if they search on ‘netbooks for Schools’ or ‘netbooks BETT’. But it is still focused on education – I’m not trying to get it to show up all over the web on irrelevant searches for netbooks.

Next, I need to get it to the right length, of 60-70 characters. I use Windows Live Writer to write my posts (which is both free and brilliant!), so I can highlight the title, and click Tools>Word Count. Which tells me it is 48 characters long. So I just need a few more.

My third version is:

Netbooks for schools at BETT – rated on our very own Wall of Cool

This leaves me with a post title that has the keywords at the front, and is 65 characters long, and which is actually more informative for everybody than the original!

Maybe I should go back and change the title of the original post!

3) Use target keywords/phrases in your post

Remember Step One – identifying the right key words or phrases? Now’s the time to make sure you’re using them properly.

Use your target keywords/phrases 3 times in your post

And for more effect, use them in your outbound links. For example, rather than writing…

“You can find out more about netbooks at BETT in my earlier post”

…you should write…

“You can find out more about netbooks at BETT in my earlier post”

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4) Get links back to your site

This isn’t about the way you write your posts, but about the way that your whole blog moves up the search engines page rankings. There’s a quantity and a quality rule here.

Quantity

Getting lots of links back to your site helps – other people referring to it in their blog posts or websites – as that will move your blog up the search rankings. One effective, and popular, way of doing this is to add comments to other people’s blogs (but, please, make them worthwhile comments!), and adding your blog’s URL in the post of the bit where you leave your website details.

Quality

A single link from a highly respected website is much more useful than a dozen links from less respected websites. And by ‘respected’ I’m talking about the relative importance ranking given to them by search engines. The various website rankings are a closely guarded secret, but if you get a link from the BBC website to yours, that’ll be a lot more valuable than a link from your friend’s new blog!

Does this all really work?

I started the series of “Good Blogging Guide” posts on Monday afternoon, and by Monday evening if you searched for ‘Good Blogging Guide’ it was appearing on the second page of Google (3rd item) and Bing (1st item). And by Tuesday, it was higher on Google, and 1st and 3rd on Bing. And on some of the key phrases, like ‘Why audience is key to good blogging’, it was coming up top on the first page of Google. A month later the first two/four links across Google, Bing and Yahoo are to my posts. And this despite almost 2 billion competing results.

In January, I wrote a series of posts (and updated our website) about the Home Access Programme – but I knew that lots of others would also be writing about it. So step one, the keywords, got me thinking about key phrases like ‘Home Access Programme’ and ‘Home Learning Package’. At the end of the first week, it was 2nd/1st in Google for these phrases, and even now, despite there being 147,000,000 search results, it’s 5th for ‘Home Access Programme’, and 1st and 3rd for ‘Home Learning Package’

I wrote a series of posts about Windows 7, specifically about how it will help schools. And if you search on key phrases like ‘Windows 7 for schools’ or ‘Windows 7 in education’ it will come up on page 1, and normally as the first item.

But the key point to emphasise is that I’ve tried to use these rules to help people find relevant content. If people are interested in a ‘Good Blogging Guide’, then hopefully the content is useful. Similarly for Windows 7 – the information I’ve written is written for education, so it’s relevant. I’m not going to suddenly include a reference to a famous celebrity to try and trick my way up the search rankings, because it wouldn’t help searchers, and it wouldn’t serve my readers very well!

Here’s the experiment I tried when I published this chapter as a blog post.

I used the phrase “search engine optimisation for blogs” and then waited to see what happened. If you did a search in Google, there were already over 26 million results. And my blog wasn’t one of them.

- Within a day, it had made it to page 2, number 4 - Within two days it had moved to page 1 - Almost a month later, it shows up on page one of Google, Bing and Yahoo

It also makes it to page one of Google when searching on the tenuous phrase blogging page one of Google

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Chapter Four – Code of Practice

We’re moving along now having looked at audience, objectives, and search engine optimisation for blogs. But these three areas are about things that you do. There’s another aspect that is important too – about the environment that you blog in. For example, do you blog as an individual or as part of your organisation or school? And if you’re blogging as an individual, are you separated from your professional identity?

So this chapter, the Blogging Code of Practice, is designed to help you to discuss, positively, blogging with other people in your organisation, so that you can create the support network you need, and agree the guidelines that are appropriate. (And if you’re a school leader, and one of your staff is starting to blog, some guidance on how you can work

together to protect each other!)

A code of practice for teachers blogging?

Don’t worry, I’m not going to provide one! I believe very strongly that online participation – whether it’s blogs, forums or Twitter is a personal thing. You’ll know that if you’re a regular reader of the blog or my Twitter feed. Although I’m blogging in my professional capacity, it is still me that’s blogging, not an automaton. However, I’m also aware that people will look at what I say and sometimes interpret what they are reading as “Microsoft’s opinion”. So I have to be careful how I express opinions sometimes, and need to know what is and isn’t acceptable.

I think that if you’re blogging in the public sector, the same situation exists. Having a code of practice is about having an agreed set of guidelines to protect you, and your school/local authority/organisation.

The good news is that it doesn’t need to be onerous, and there are existing examples that apply

Here are for examples to help you (a) consider your own and (b) to use to guide others (eg your head teacher or local authority) to get an effective code.

Ray Fleming The Good Blogging Guide Page 13

The Civil Service Blogging Code

Most people are surprised to learn that there’s a code for Civil Servants to follow on blogging (and general social

media participation). And the fact that it’s brief is a second surprise.

There are 9,421 words in the Code for MP’s Allowances (the Parliamentary Green Book), and well over 400 in our employee code for the protection of laptops. So would it surprise you to learn that there are only 78 words in the Civil Service code for online participation?

The code was announced last year in Parliament by the MP Tom Watson from the Cabinet Office, and the code was published. Unfortunately the link it was published on is now a dead link (doh!), but after quite a bit of searching, I’ve found the place they’ve now published it (and it has a new preamble to it ).

The Civil Service code for blogging

And here’s what it says:

Principles for participation online

1. Be credible

Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.

2. Be consistent

Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.

3. Be responsive

When you gain insight, share it where appropriate.

4. Be integrated

Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.

5. Be a civil servant

Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.

Considering how tortuous some public sector documents can be (If I never have to read another procurement document

in my life, I will die happy!) this is a model of clarity, simplicity and brevity. I think it makes it very clear what you have to do to meet the needs of the organisation you work for when blogging.

Microsoft Blogging Code

There are only two words in our blogging code:

“Blog Smart”

Basically, it means that the company expects me to exercise good judgement, and ‘be smart’ when I’m blogging. I also interpret it to mean that all the same principles and policies that apply to our normal public interactions generally also apply to blogging. For example, if I know something that is confidential internal information, I wouldn’t blog about it, and equally I wouldn’t tell somebody I met at a conference or my neighbour.

So if 78 words for the Civil Service blogging code were a surprise, then I guess 2 words in our code are even more surprising.

Don’t take either of these as being simplistic – they are not. They are simple. Simple to

understand, simple to follow and simple to monitor.

In both cases, a lot of people will have had a lot of input and taken a lot of time to get there. As Mark Twain is famously quoted as saying “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”, neatly capturing the experience that it’s easier to write more than less.

As an aside, here's Intel's Social Media Guidance (http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm) . Anybody know of others?

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The UK Education team’s blogging guidelines

When I originally started blogging it was just me, doing my stuff. But over time we’ve expanded out the number of blogs written, and also have some written by teams. So although this one is written by me alone, (along with the Further Education blog), then Higher Education blog is one I write jointly with Dominic Watts (our Higher Ed business manager); Kristen & Stuart write a Teachers blog and Mark A’Bear and I write an Education Partners blog.

Partly because people wanted some guidance, and partly to ensure consistency for the readers when a team blog is written by more than one author, we created our own blogging code. To be fair, they are more like writing-style guidelines, because they are aimed at making sure that the experience for the reader is consistent.

- Always write as an individual, to an individual

- Wherever possible, express an opinion

- Tell them how they could use what we’re providing

- Don’t just link to another resource without something specific for our audience

- Always put everything into the audience context

The aim of the guidelines are to make sure that we don’t drift into writing corporate-speak, which people can sometimes do accidentally (or sometimes because they think it is expected). Or simply turn into a parrot of other information, or weblinks, from other Microsoft sources. My personal bar to get over is “Am I adding anything specifically useful for schools in the UK?” If not, I won’t blog it.

A Code of Practice for blogging in education

I was interested to see the East Lothian Council Social Media code (http://edubuzz.pbworks.com/socialmediastaff_ , which is provided for staff in their schools to encourage and support them to engage online. Again, the focus is on simple, clear and straightforward advice, and it covers style issues as well as the good practice issues

Best Practice Guidelines for Staff

• Keep secrets and be mindful of what you say

• Be respectful to your colleagues

• Get your facts straight

• Be Interesting – writing or talking is hard work - let's not add to this by making the reading difficult too

• Write what you know – add value

• Quality matters – respect the ELC EDUCATION identity and values

• Provide context to your argument

• Engage in Private Feedback

I haven’t seen any individual school blogging guidelines or codes, but I’m sure there are some out there too.

A call to action

This chapter took longest to write, and I still feel I’m only scratching the surface. Do you know of other sources for good practice blogging codes for schools? Are there any aspects that should be in the perfect blogging code within education (to encourge as well as protect)?

Either add comments to the blog post on this (http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2009/06/26/good-blogging-guide-part-four-code-of-practice.aspx), or email me, or even ping me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/rayfleming) to help move the discussion forward. It may even be possible to create the definitive ‘Starter for 10’ code for education.

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Using Twitter for engagement in Government

A while after I’d written the rest of this chapter online, I came across something that adds a new dimension to the section.

The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has a a Head of Corporate Digital Channels – Neil Williams – who has shared some of his advice on the strategy for the use of Twitter by Government Departments. Unlike some of the examples I gave in the Code of Practice, which has 2 or 20 words, it is longer – at 20 pages – but partly this is because it contains more context to the ideas.

Neil has shared the whole document – including key objectives and measures of success; risks and mitigations – that provides an excellent reference. Although it was written thinking of central government departments, it provides a good starter for educational users.

As a new Twitter user myself, it also gives useful hints on tools to use to enhance engagement with other Twitter users.

You can read all of the advice here:

http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/post/2009/07/21/Template-Twitter-strategy-for-Government-Departments.aspx

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Chapter Five – No lawyers please

Nope, this isn’t a reference to litigation, or any of the legalities of blogging (for things of that flavour, read Chapter 4). This chapter is all about writing style. It’s about being clear and simple.

The title ‘No Lawyers Please’ comes from people I’ve worked with in the past, who seem to be completely normal people until they put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. Suddenly, their whole character changes. Whereas they speak like anybody else, they write as though they are Charles Dickens, or a High Court judge. They have perhaps been taught by somebody who believed that unless a word had 15 syllables, it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

I would have been fairer if I’d called this ‘No educational policymakers please’, because I’ve noticed that there’s definitely a pattern to announce new policies in a way that befuddles with language. And looking in the mirror, perhaps ‘No technologists please’, because we’re also guilty of using language which is hard to work out and full of acronyms.

The key to remember when you blog is that most people look at it on their screen, and will scan it quite quickly before they move on to another thing. So you have to grab them quickly, and not put them off too soon.

My quick rules for this are:

Be as personable as you possibly can (often a challenge for me!)

Write the way you speak

Don’t use language to make you look smart

Drop the superlatives if they’re not deserved

If it’s confidential don’t write it down

Be as personable as you possibly can

Well, I know that this can be tricky. How much of your life and yourself do you want to talk about? How many people are interested? I think we all make our own decisions on this, but I’d say that if you think about your reader, you shouldn’t go wrong. For example, if I write about my children, it is within the context of the story that I am telling.

When my eldest daughter got told by her teacher that the video she had produced for the World War II timeline homework had to be redone as photos stuck to cardboard so it could be ‘assessed properly’, I thought that was relevant to my blog in context

When my youngest came home from school having spent her Science lesson counting Tesco vouchers, I didn’t rush to my blog to wail about it.

Get the line right and you’ll hopefully write something others will want to read and come across as a person not just a literary genius. Get it wrong, and you could be blogging into a vacuum.

Honesty here: I have no idea if I get it right or wrong, and sometimes when I’ve wandered too far either way, I’ve had comments, but often I get people talking to me about something I’ve written in a positive or constructive way, which I take as being good feedback.

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Write the way you speak (and don’t use language to make you look smart)

Just use the same language. The web has a very short time span in which to grab your readers, and hold them. Shorter words and simpler sentences help. This rule doesn’t apply in every situation – but if you think your readers are coming through, on their way somewhere else, then the easier it is to understand what you’re saying, the more likely they’ll stick around or come back.

There are some tools you can use to help with this. The easiest one is the SMOG (simplified measure of gobbledygook) test, which gives you a rating for your readability. You simply paste in your text, and then it will calculate the SMOG level. And you can use that to work out if what you’ve written will be understood by your reader.

It isn’t foolproof, but it is a handy and simple test.

NIACE have an online SMOG calculator (http://www.niace.org.uk/misc/SMOG-calculator/smogcalc.php) , which is straightforward. Basically, the lower your SMOG score, the more readable things are. They also publish a great readability booklet called “How to produce clear written materials for a range of readers” which covers much more than writing style. (http://shop.niace.org.uk/readability.html)

For general guidance, here are some typical SMOG levels (generally, the lower the number, the easier it is to read):

The Sun - scores 14

The Daily Express - scores 16

The Telegraph and The Guardian - scores 17+

I did a couple of quick tests on some materials. I thought I’d point the finger at myself first, by testing the chapters in this booklet:

Chapter One – scores 18

Chapter Two – scores 15

Chapter Three– scores 15

Chapter Four– scores 17

Chapter Five – scores 16

I’m not unhappy with 15-17, that’s about right for writing to people in education (degree-level) but if I was writing for a very wide audience, I’d like to aim for 14-15. And considering the booklet on Readability mentioned above scores 17, then I guess it’s okay.

And to make my point about educational policy language:

Becta website on Information Management in schools –scores 24 http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=lv&catcode=ss_lv_mis_im03&rid=16037

Becta website on Data Handling in schools – scores 22 http://schools.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=lv&catcode=ss_lv_mis_im03&rid=14734

DCSF ‘Protection of Children’ -scores 21 http://publications.dcsf.gov.uk/DownloadHandler.aspx?ProductId=CM+7589&VariantID=The+protection+of+children+in+England%3a+action+plan+-+The+Government's+response+to+Lord+Laming+PDF&

And finally, the way to tell if you’re using language to make yourself look smart? Personally, if I have to ask somebody a spelling then I know I’m using a word I don’t normally use…

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Drop the superlatives if they are not deserved

I remember when I first joined Microsoft, after 20+ years of working within British companies, I found it a little odd that colleagues would declare things awesome or super-exciting. Especially when coming from a workplace where good was counted as high praise. Over time, I’ve adjusted, and have even gone so far as to describe one thing as cool (but my daughter stopped that straight away!).

Worldwide research has shown that the UK education audience don’t really like unjustified superlatives. So if something is good, then say it’s good, not amazing.

Of course, if something is brilliant, then say so. But if you call everything brilliant, you’re probably going to lose readers faster than gaining them.

And don’t get me started on people who use too many exclamation marks in emails! And people who use three!!! At the end of every sentence!!! Doesn’t it make you cry???

If it’s confidential don’t write it down

No more to say on this. People who’ve broken this rule and been found out never need reminding twice. If you need it, then see Chapter Four for more context.

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Chapter Six – When things go wrong

Hopefully this is the chapter you’ll never need. So I’ll make it short!

Imagine the scenario…

You have been blogging for a while, and you have the support and encouragement of other people in your school/local authority. Things are looking good. What could possibly go wrong?

One of the common things is that somebody somewhere says something inappropriate online, and then somebody in your school comes along and says “Well, you’re an expert in the Internet, can you fix it?” It could be something like a comment on a YouTube video, or Facebook, or even a comment on your blog. Or somebody else writes a blog post referring to yours, and saying what a half-wit you are.

What do you do?

Fortunately, official help is at hand. Instead of having to spend hours/days/weeks explaining to your head teacher why you can’t block YouTube/Facebook across the whole country – or having to defend your blogging - then how about using this flow chart from the US Air Force?

It deals with the steps in responding (or not) to a negative blog posting about them. I have found also that it is incredibly useful to use when talking to people who don’t yet fully understand the implications of social media, and the community habits. After all, if an organisation as big and hierarchical as USAF can deal with online communities with a simple flow chart, then it makes an effective point.

It starts with “Has someone discovered a blog post about your organisation?” and walks through scenarios of people, which it refers to as:

Trolls

Rager

Misguided

Unhappy Customer

It then provides common sense advice for dealing with each situation. As a set of rules of engagement, it’s simple to understand and clear to work through.

The diagram is self explanatory – and ideal to share with colleagues. You can download a PDF of the Air Force Blog Assessment from the GlobalNerdy blog: http://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/air_force_web_posting_response_assessment-v2-1_5_09.pdf

If you’re interested in reading more about the USAF’s social media interactions, then read WebInkNow’s article about it, or take a look at the US Air Force Live blog

Webink: http://www.webinknow.com/2008/12/the-us-air-force-armed-with-social-media.html US Air Force Live blog: http://airforcelive.dodlive.mil/

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