What makes a good blog post?

I just came across a great post from Stephen Hale of the UK Foreign Office, summing up his evaluation of the foreign office blogs.  His findings show that blogs and blog posts work best if they are real, authentic and above all 2-way.

Our advice isn't the same for every blogger, but we are using our findings to encourage our bloggers to be personal (say things that only they could say), real time (if it takes days to draft or check the facts then it's probably not a blog), integrated (with other things they're doing on and offline), responsive (responding to comments), and targeted (writing about things that people are already talking about online).

If you've ever written, or wanted to write, a post for the staff blog or the public library blog I would encourage you to read through Stephen Hale's findings.  I like what he is saying.

In my opinion, if you keep a few simple principles in mind, you'll be writing great blog posts.

• Be authentic - by this I mean be real. Allow your personality to come through in your writing. Try not to write for a blog as if you were drafting a media release. Include your opinions. be thought provoking.
  **Obviously if you are writing for the public blog and you are discussing a potentially controversial topic, an increase in overdue fines for instance, you will want to run your article past a senior manager before publishing it.**
• Start a conversation - While there is space for announcements in the blogs, it's usually more interesting if the blog post is the start of the conversation, which goes on in the comments. Think of a blog post as a talk-back radio announcer encouraging the listeners to ring in with their thoughts about a story.  Can you phrase your post as a question?
• Be current - if you're blogging about something that happened two weeks ago the interest has probably dissipated.  Try to pick up on what's happening now. Can you relate your post to what's happening in the wider community or society?

With these few principles in mind it's time to start contributing.  Anyone is free to contribute to the staff blog. To get started simply email your post to suthlib.staffnews@blogger.com  If you want to post regularly and would like to use blogger's editor let me know and I'll send you an invite to become an author. 

If you want to write something for the public blog get your thoughts down and send them to your team coordinator.  If you would like to become a regular contributor let me (Angela or Jacinta) know.