Blogging Guide

This is a short guide to help you make the best of your blogging with IQsensato. (An entry on a blog is also called a ‘post’).

Ten IQsensato rules

  1. Title – Bloggers often either spend too little time thinking up a title or they make it too clever. The title is very important and it the first opportunity the writer has to persuade the potential reader to read the blog. This means it has to be obvious – it needs to tell the reader what the blog is about rather than being obscure and witty! Most people we communicate with are in information overload environments, which means that as soon as their brain can tell them to skip something they will. This is OK if the blog is about something they are not interested in – after all, we don’t want to waste their time. But if they switch off because they don’t understand or misunderstand the title, we have lost an opportunity.
  2. Author – Put the authors name as the first two words of the post (in italics) and then a dash, and then we start the blog proper, e.g.:

Heather Budge-Reid - Once upon a time there was …

OR

Heather Budge-Reid and Joe Bloggs – Once upon a time there was …

This means that the blog alerts that go out will indicate who the author(s) is(are).

  1. Writing an introduction – The first paragraph must be an introduction. It must be tightly and well written in order to draw people in. For us, the first paragraph must explain what the blog is about and should include between three  and five of the five Ws – Who, What, Where, When and Why. It is a skill to write good first paragraphs and it’s a skill that improves with practice. A good first paragraph reduces the likelihood of relevant people switching off.
  2. Length of text – The maximum length of an IQsensato blog should be between 500 and 600 words. If you have more to say, split the blog into two or three separate posts published over several days. If you have a lot more to say and it is written in the form of a paper, then it is possible to put the paper up on the internet (if you speak to us, we can help you with this) and then reference the full paper by linking to it from a shorter blog post. This is the best way to publish more academic styled papers with footnotes, etc.
  3. Using ‘we’. ‘We’ can only be used to describe IQsensato, not the sector nor any other group.
  4. References – If you want to put a reference in a blog then it should be an online reference and within the text. Lists of references at the end of a blog indicate that you may be trying to publish a more academic paper (see point 4 above for help with this) rather than a blog.
  5. Footnotes – These should not be used in a blog as they indicate that a more academic approach is being used (see point 4 if you would like help with publishing a paper). If you absolutely have to have a footnote, please contact John (john@iqsensato.org) before publishing the final blog.
  6. Use a spell checker – Write your blog in Word (or other word processor, such as OpenOffice) and run the spell checker and grammar checker before posting. To post, log into WordPress and copy the title and text from your Word document and paste it into the blog, using the special ‘Paste from Word’ button above the editing box of the blog posting page (the button has a blue W on it, like the Word logo). Then cut the title text and paste it into the special title field in WordPress. [This will avoid strange punctuation and formatting causing problems in the blog.]
  7. Don’t disagree with each other in blogs – If you are an IQsensato staff member and you want to disagree with another blogger on the IQsensato website then do this by ‘commenting’ on the original blog post and not by writing a new blog post.
  8. Copyright law – If you are using third-party material, be sure that you understand the applicable copyright rules. In particular, check the copyright and licensing terms for the material. Most importantly, remember that the IQsensato blog operates under a creative commons license. See the notice at the bottom of the blog page.

Four general rules for responsible blogging

These are taken from 25 Tips to Optimize your Blog.

  1. Check your facts: technology makes it incredibly easy to produce and share content nowadays. The result is that information spreads like wildfire through social networks, bookmarking sites and blogs. Unfortunately, we are talking about both correct and incorrect information. Make sure to check your facts before publishing posts or articles, else you might not only look dumb, but also misinform and damage other people and organisations.
  2. Consider the implications: as mentioned before, information on the Internet spreads like wildfire. Consider the implications of what you write, and remember that once you hit “Publish” you will immediately lose control over those words.
  3. Give credit where credit is due: always reference your sources. If you do not want to mention an external website in your content, just add a link at the end of the post saying “Via: Reference.com”. This practice is not only important under an ethical point of view, but it also ensures that readers can eventually dig to the root of the facts. Second, even if you are using free templates or open source software like WordPress, make sure to credit the authors.
  4. Disclose sponsored posts: sponsored reviews represent an efficient way for advertisers to build buzz and for bloggers to earn money. It is essential, however, that you make your position regarding those posts transparent in front of your readers. First of all, you can insert a disclosure notice at the end of the sponsored post. Second, you can create a dedicated page on your blog outlining how sponsored reviews will be treated and what the readers should expect from them.

Three requests from IQsensato

1. Post often

The more frequently you post, the more likely the Googlebot and other bots that trawl the web indexing pages will stop by on a more regular basis. If you only post very rarely, expect that it might take a while for Google to stop by and see that you actually have updated again. Google loves updated, fresh sites, so it make sense to feed the bot what it wants.

2. Spread the ‘Link Love’

If you are blogging about a story, link up the original story as well as others’ commentary on the same topic. When you do so, you will often make those bloggers aware of your blog’s existence (if they weren’t already) when people click from your blog to theirs. And it also increases the odds that they will either link to you on that story or on something you blog about in the future.

3. Blogging style

If you would like to publish a short academic style paper then we can help you to write a blog that links to a paper. We can also find room for your paper in a special space on our website for content of a more academic nature. IQsensato does not take responsibility for the content. IQsensato reserves the right to refuse publication.

There is plenty more advice on how to optimise your blog at http://searchengineland.com/25-tips-to-optimize-your-blog-for-readers-search-engines-10226 and on other sources.

Links for learning to use WordPress for blogging

http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging

http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts

To log into WordPress, go to http://www.iqsensato.org/blog and look for the ‘Log in’ link in the right-hand sidebar (http://www.iqsensato.org/blog/wp-login.php).

Tip: use the editor in ‘Visual’ mode – in this mode, the special ‘Paste from Word’ button should be visible at the top of the editor area. If you can only see one row of buttons, look for the ‘Show/Hide Kitchen Sink’ button at the right-hand end of the row of buttons and click it to see more buttons.