Bank Holiday Blog - Rog T's guide to good blogging

Since I started my little blog, we've had a whole rash of new blogs in Barnet. Now as a bit of an addict, I thought I'd put together a little guide to tell all you Rog T wannabees how to do it properly. I'm a compulsive reader, so if I have to read them, let's at least make them fun & interesting.

1. Your profile. Write yourself a good profile, let us know who you are, what you like and what you are up to. Probably my favourite profile is that of Simon Dyda

2. Give us a great picture of yourself (unless you are hellishly ugly). The picture I use was taken in Ray Randall, former bass player of the Tornado's studio in Colindale in 1982. I'm contemplating the mix of our cod reggae track - Falsedub. If I had to pick a favourite picture, I'd choose Scarlett the Heavenly Healer, it's gives a aura of peacefuless & calm. It's an intriguing photo with good composition and a air of mysteriousness. I guess that the picture looks exactly what you'd expect a heavely healer to look like. If she was in dungaries putting the bins out, it really wouldn't work, would it?

3. Put a few interesting apps in the sidebar. I've put the IP lookup app in there, as one of my themes is "invisible men" and this helps you find them. I also like polls.

4. Content. All I can suggest is that you blog about stuff you find interesting and that you care about. Blogs which are written by people who enjoy writing are always far more interesting than ones where people are just trying to score silly points without actually thinking things through. If I had to suggest a good example of a local politicians blog, check City Hall, by Roger Evans (Leader of GLA Conservatives). I don't agree with Roger's politics, but it's a good blog that does what it says on the tin. Most of it is only of interest to locals, but his roundup of GLA stuff is excellent. My favourite Labour blog is TORYTROLL, many London stories break here first. I suspect Adam is read by at least as many tories as Labourites. There's a whole spectrum of other blogs. I quite like the food & the sports ones. My favourite Foodie one is Lennie Nash, wannabee chef. As to sports blogs, I rather like the local team blogs. Here's a good example from Headstone Manor FC. I like to try and vary my content, between local politics, music, sport & whatever I feel like. I usually have three or four things a day, but time constraints usually make me pick just one. Usually the one which I am most het up about. I enjoy the music blogs most though.

5. Pictures. They say one picture says a thousand words. In terms of hits, my Boris Johnson specials are far and away the most popular, not least because Dave Hill at the Guardian likes them and often links to them. This is my favourate pictorial post from my blog. I tend to think mild funpoking works better than spoofed abusive pictures. If people snigger & think "thats funny" they are receptive. If they just think "that's someone with a personal grudge being nasty, they don't really take it in.

6. Be honest. I never have a go at someone unless they deserve it. If they deserve it, they get it and it doesn't matter which party they belong to. Some people suggest that I focus too much on a small number of individuals in Barnet, but this is a) because they are doing a bad job and b) because they court publicity. I don't attack the likes of Fiona Bulmer as she does a good job and isn't a rampant self publicist. As for the Boris specials, I do these because I think they are funny.

7. Hits. I use Statcounter. There is also Google analytics, but I don't know too much about that. Both are free. I've been told that if you install both, they give different counts. I get visitors from around the world. Here's the visit map for today. Most of the non UK are looking at the music posts (apart from the one in Israel, which I suspect is a certain ex Barnet Councillor, given what he's looking at). If you want to boost your hits, you'll find that leaving messages on other blogs will help. I'd suggest that if this is the only reason to post messages, then you are better off sticking to similar blogs, as if you leave messages on Andalucian Yak farming blogs, they may check you out once, but they won't be back.


8. Colours. Make the blog easy to read. I started using Black background/white letters. Everyone said it was hard to read, so I adopted the current layout. No one has moaned since.

9. Most important of all. If you have something interesting to say, you'll get an audience. I only started tracking my hits in February, but I know that I am getting around 15 times more hits here, than the old blog at the Hendon Times. Whilst I was there I was working under the constraint that I couldn't refer to Mike Freer - Leader of Barnet Council. I suspect from his recently announced blog figures, I don't think he's the reason for the boost though. What is most interesting is that most of my hits these days are direct refers - ie where people have bookmarked the blog. The most popular referals are emails, where people send the url to their friends. Virtually the only search hits are from people checking out the music blogs.

Anyway, hope this was interesting and helpful. Oh and I've linked to the blogs I like most at the side of the page.