Tips on creating a blog on the Community Site
Description: The following article discusses how to blog and acts as a guidance document.
To blog or not to blog?
There are two things to consider when deciding whether to blog:
1. Is your content genuinely an opinion piece or personal experience you’d like to share? (Or are you trying to promote something?!)
2. How are you going to make your blog as interesting as possible for others? (Your end goal should always be to generate comments from the community.)
The following information will help you decide whether a blog is the right way to communicate your content.
What is a blog?
For the Teach First community, a blog is piece of content that is a personal account or experience. There are no further guidelines on what should be blogged about, other than it must be vision-aligned.
Why would I blog?
Blogs are particularly useful tools for reflection and also to encourage discussion – a sense check of whether others are also interested in an issue. Originally blogs were perceived as online diaries ‘web-logs’, however today you see a mix of personal blogs and professional blogs across the web. For Teach First, because the charity’s brand is people centred, the personal stories that can be shared via blogs are vital to increase our public profile, as well as facilitate connections between members of the community.
What does a good blog look like?
The community library has a great item on how to write the perfect blog post, you can read it here.
Am I allowed to promote things in a blog?
In short, yes you can. However, nobody likes to read a blog that is purely about the hard-sell. If you want to share a great opportunity, think about why this is important to you and try to convey your personal opinion. If you simply want to advertise something then you will need to create a Marketplace item on the community site.
What if no one comments?
All good bloggers are also great commenters. If you want to engage with the community it’s a two way street! Make sure you regularly engage with other people’s content. The community website is very new and high engagement will take time – be proactive and start demonstrating best practice! If no one comments on your blog it might be that you didn’t provoke a response or that not enough people saw the blog. Over time blogging and commenting will become second nature but don’t panic if it’s a little slow to start.
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