FRANKLIN PIERCE LAW CENTER LIBRARY

Blogging

by Roberta Woods

Why Blog?

In a world of homogenized news and information created by large media outlets for their 24/7 news requirements, blogging has enabled the voice of the individual to be heard. It is the individuality of the voice that makes blogging so attractive and successful. Read what attorney Dennis Kennedy, a blogger, has to say about the individual voice in making blogs what they are.

A new Pew survey of Internet usage shows blog readership shot up 58% in 2004, but 62% of American Internet users don't know what a blog is. According to blogger Dave Pollard, what the blogosphere needs more of is

1. original research, surveys etc.
2. original, well-crafted fiction
3. great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
4. news not found anywhere else
5. category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
6. clever, concise political opinion (most readers prefer these consistent with their own views)
7. benchmarks, quantitative analysis
8. personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
9. first-hand accounts
10. live reports from events
11. insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
12. short educational pieces
13. relevant "aha" graphics
14. great photos
15. useful tools and checklists
16. précis, summaries, reviews and other time-savers
17. fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive content

One quality the items on this list have in common is content, especially NEW content. (I thought that's what the news was supposed to be.) Well, it could be "new to you" and/or your readers rather than original, but originality is the overall, lofty goal.

If you have an expertise, blogging is where you can shine. Let the world know what you think about a particular topic or new book or new fad. What is important is to narrowly define what your blog is about. Think niche...what is your particular pocket of knowledge? Remember: blogging takes time. It's like writing a book one snippet at a time nearly every day, but at the end of some period of time you have a book.

Keep up-to-date by reading other blogs, noticing changes in software and trends in design. The Internet is a continually evolving entity with change as its fundamental nature. No one wants to feel they are reading yesterday's news.

One really good technique to use is to produce a list of the three best anythings or the ten best tips for whatever. Anything that sounds like it's finite, useful and quick will likely be passed around the Internet.

Style Matters

As with anything that is written and preserved, good writing, writing that is focused and structured attracts more readers than just spewing off slang for the sake of spewing off slang or even foul words. [Make no mistake that blogs are being preserved somewhere in cyberspace. Just look at the Internet Archive.] If you think something sucks, then pick out some quality to point out about it and how it fails in your opinion. But don't say it sucks. It may not sound so witty a few months or years down the road when your circumstances change. Be specific about your criticism if you have to criticize.

Should you express your opinion or be objective? That depends. If you are an expert, then expressing your opinion might help people who read your blog and be a real service. If you aren't an expert you may just want a place to add your two cents. It's entirely up to you. How to decide depends on the overall objective of your blog. The After Hours blawg intends to introduce new online legal research sites or announce news about our Law Library. It is, by definition, objective. Where the After Hours blawg expresses its opinion is in its selection of blog content.

So you create your blog, what next? That's where the Nuts and Bolts of Blogging comes in with a few tips on cascading style sheets and HTML.

Nuts and Bolts of blogging

CSS

Blogs primarily use CSS (cascading style sheets) for their layout and their format. You needn't become a CSS expert to change the color of the font or the background, but you do need some information about CSS to guide you. Take a look at a blog template and you'll see what I'm talking about. It looks like another language, and, it is. Here are some easy changes that any novice could easily make.

Color by itself means font color and it is expressed as a six character hexadecimal number preceded by a # sign. (If you don't know hex, I cannot help you, :-) but this site might.) Sometimes the hexadecimal number is only three characters long. In that case, those three numbers simply repeat. (Hexadecimal is a base 16 numbering system that uses 0 through 9 plus the characters A through F to represent the numbers. F = 16)

Font-family is the font style and it is grouped as a family because not every computer has your font installed on it, so if you express it as a family or generically as serif (with adornment) or san serif (without adornment).

Font-weight is bold, italic, bold italic or normal.

Background-color is expressed as a hexadecimal number and refers to the underlying color of something. What that something is, is identified in the first line before the {. If it's td or th or tr, then it's the background color inside a table. If it's in body { , then it's the background color of the page. You can always experiment by changing a color and then previewing the changes.

HTML

Hypertext markup language or HTML is the way web pages are coded or marked-up so that they display properly on a browser. You will need to know some basic HTML.

To Make a Hyperlink: <a href="http://rest-of-your-link">What You Want to Visible</a>

To Make a Mail Link: <a href="mailto:your-email-address">Name</a>