Blog Relations

The Easter Scandal in British politics proves once again that Government does not, and cannot understand what blogs are about. One of Gordon Brown’s closest advisers planned to plant unfounded rumours about opposition politicians and their wives in a phony blog run by a crony. Big mistake.

Three reminders about blogs.

1. Big institutions cannot find the authentic voice needed to run a successful blog. The fake blog (RedRag) would not have rung true.
2. You can’t just start a blog and expect that people will take any notice of you. It takes time, hard work, networking, and consistency for a blogger to build up a following. There was never any chance that a new fabricated blog would burst onto the scene and make waves. It would have gone unnoticed because it hadn’t taken time to grow roots and branches into the blogging scene.
3. The blogosphere is one giant lie-detector. Information in blogs that count is peer reviewed by the rest of the blogosphere. Lies and fabrications always out. It’s a myth that blogs are a good place to spread unfounded rumours. Get an unfounded rumour on the BBC (as New Labour used to do in its youth) and it becomes The Truth. To get a story established in the blogosphere, it has to stand up to vigorous cross-examination and testing.

A lot of people have a lot of trouble understanding what blogs are about – and they always will. I don’t think that governments or large companies are ever really going to “get it”.

Wired Magazine has certainly got the bloggers linking to its site with its provocative article Blogging is Dead.

The general line is that micro-blogging sites like Twitter make blogging look oh so 2004.

Well, Wired has a point. I’ve noted here before that bloggers blog less often now that they are twittering away with tweets like “I’m on the train to Stoke-On-Trent”.

But actually,  I now think that’s good for blogging. It used to be a common complaint that people blogged about trivia. Now when people have nothing to say, they put it up on Twitter or they update their Facebook status. When they think and want to write, they blog.

Oh this Twitter thing does make me feel a bit old though ! I was slow to get onto it, and am still more happy blogging. I think there are plenty of others out there like me. Blogging is more or less acceptable now. Almost respectable. You aren’t an anorak anymore because you blog. But I do think you have are likely to be young if you are on facebook, or a techie if you are on twitter, or suit if you are on Linkedin.

That’s not to say that micro-blogging hasn’t taken over some of the functions of a blog. Facebook and Twitter are the places now to follow what your network is doing, and to let people know what you are up to. Blogs are more integrated into websites nowadays. They are the easy-to-update bit. They are the freshest news – they are your bit-by-bit build up of content into an online resource. They are the place where people can comment and get back to you – including people outside your immediate network.

Anyway, glad to hear that blogging is alive and kicking in Manchester.

Although there are zillions of plugins that can add all sorts functions to WordPress, it’s best not to use too many, as each one uses up server resources and can break your blog if the developer does not keep it up to date.

Some of the extensions we mention here – such Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics are not strictly-speaking plugins – but they are extensions that we always add to a site we work on.

Here’s a shortish list:

XML Sitemap – to assist search engines

Google Webmaster Tools - to see how Google views site

Google Analytics – to give in-depth statistics about visitors

Cache – to speed up page views and reduce server load

Akismet -defense against comment spam (non-commercial version)

Ability for you to embed picture galleries, audio or video on your site, if required.

WordPress is blogging platform that can easily run ordinary website and media-rich sites such as podcasts. Why use WP and not some other platform? Here are some reasons.

1. WordPress is a free – we can’t argue with that, but some actually consider that free is “disadvantage” – they tend to be people with more money than sense.
2. Although WordPress is free, its development is overseen by a commercial company, Automattic, and they bring commercial savvy, financial resources, and slickness to the project
3. WordPress has a huge community of developers and enthusiasts behind it – this means that there is a mass of online documentation and any number of plugins and themes.
4. WordPress has a very rapid development cycle, which keeps it at the cutting edge as far as features are concerned, and any bugs or security holes are rapidly squashed.
5. WordPress has a focus on usability and user-testing which many open source projects lack.