blogging

This post is the last in a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Okay, I’ve rambled and covered a hell of a lot of ground. To be honest it’s hard to give a proper masterclass or How To for blogging because the beauty of the form is there are no rules. I know what works for me but it’s unlikely to work for you and some of the best blogs I’ve seen have been approaching the medium in ways I hadn’t ever considered before. You should use blogging (and other similar web services like Flickr and Last.FM) in the same way you use other forms of communication like the telephone or your local pub - in ways that work for you and the community you’re part of.

And while this might be scary be assured that underlying it all is the magic that makes the internet work, the reason that you can find stuff on Google, how an American became a fan of you band on MySpace or how you got that commission because someone blogged a photo of your work with a link to your site.

Blogging might be as easy as writing an email but its the structured metadata that takes your message and makes available to the right people across the world. And the beauty of it all is you don’t have to think about it, unless you want to (and it’s not that hard really - hell, I can’t write programming code and I get it). You just need to go to wordpress.com (4talentmagazine.com is built with Wordpress), blogger.com, typepad.com or some other blogging service and get posting and linking. The internet looks after the rest.

< Week 7: plugging into the system

< Read the series from the start

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Now let’s say that you’re actually really boring. There’s a market for what you do but to be honest the mechanisms of how you do it aren’t really of interest to anyone. Or let’s say you just don’t want to communicate all this fluffy personal nonsense. Blogging as I’ve described it here just doesn’t interest you in the slightest. Allowing for the fact that you probably haven’t read this far (which, if you’ll forgive me, demonstrates a limitation of the magazine form - online this “post” would stand alone and those for whom it might be relevant would find it through Google regardless of what came before or after it on the blog itself) the blogging form still has value to you.

You’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0. If you’ve investigated it a bit you might think it has to do with something called User Generated Content and heralds a revolution whereby professionals are overthrown in favour of the amateur masses, or somesuch nonsense. While this is a side-effect of the blogging revolution it’s not what’s really important about it. What’s really interesting is that the internet is starting to be populated by data that is structured and interchangeable according to established standards.

To illustrate what this means think of a library full of books. Every book is different with unique content but there are aspects of the books that fit into categories. The title, author, publisher, Dewy Decimal categories, dimensions, ISBN, and so on. This information can be indexed by the library to not only identify what shelf the book is held on but how it relates to other books in the collection, very handy for books that cover a number of different subjects.

Most blogging services, along with services like Flickr and YouTube, structure the information you put into them in a similar way. So a blog post has at the very least a title, date, category, and the content itself. And because this is based on accepted standards all this information is interchangeable. Which means anyone can take your content and stick it into a giant database automatically. And then people can ask this database questions and find relevant and accurate information which may well include your content.

You might hear people talking about arcane and mysterious arts like Search Engine Optimisation but this is pretty much all there is to it. Put your stuff online in a manner in which Google can understand it and you’ll appear in the relevant search results. If you have photos on Flickr that are accurately tagged in relation to their subject then they’ll appear in the searches for those subjects.

You don’t have to run a “blog” in the accepted sense of the word in order to get into this game. It’s just that blogs automatically structure themselves in this way and since they’re very easy to use it makes sense to take advantage of this. This YouTube video called Web 2.0 Machine explains this rather well. And when you’re doing this, have a think about how that little search query works for a piece of video. It’s all about the metadata, a piece of jargon which simply means “data about data”. Give you stuff metadata and people will find it. If you don’t have properly structured metadata your website will just sit there with nobody finding it, no matter how lovely it looks.

< Week 6: first impressions

Next in the series: in conclusion >

Pete Ashton is a Birmingham-based blogger specialising in helping individuals, businesses and organisations understand, follow and engage with the social internet. He set up Created in Birmingham with Stef Lewandowski, a blog linking up the city’s creative and artistic communities, and ran it for a year, joint-winning the Guardian Media award for best blog in 2008. He’s been blogging for eight years and now offers his services through his digitial communications consultancy ASH-10.

http://ash10.com

http://peteashton.com

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

So here you are, trying to turn your creative skills into a business that pays your bills and here I am telling you not to worry about the polish of what you’re putting on the internet. Isn’t that a bit like meeting your bank manager dressed in torn jeans, and chewing gum? Sure, it might be you but is it wise? That’s ultimately a decision you’re going to have to make for yourself, but be aware that blogging doesn’t dictate a particular style. You can be as formal and polished as you want.

In fact, taking a bit of care over your words and presentation can be rather refreshing and make you stand out from the crowd. And you don’t have to completely be yourself. This is the Internet so feel free to invent aspects of your character and play with them. You could even pretend your business is a corporation with offices around the world rather than based in your kitchen and push this spoof to absurd limits. Maybe your ‘factory’ is staffed by sentient robots or something. The possibilities are endless, really.

But above all remember that the blog doesn’t replace other more traditional forms of marketing. You’re probably still going to need some kind of brochure that looks all slick and some kind of formal business statement stuff. An analogy I like to use is a high street shop.

The window display is slick and probably dictated by the bods in head office. People glance at it and know immediately what they’re getting. It’s beautifully designed and communicates the message well. So the potential customer comes into the shop and starts chatting to the guy behind the counter. He’s a little hungover and stressed but very passionate about the products on sale and has the sort of knowledge that comes from being immersed in an industry. As it happens they don’t have what the customer wants so he sends them to a similar shop down the road but the customer is impressed with the service and likes this guy on a personal level so they make a point of coming back.

Assuming you’re a sole trader your best marketing tool is yourself. If you’re running a stall at a craft market or pitching your film to funders your personality is going to go a long way to clinching the deal. The same goes for online. You need to complement the lovely photos of your work with a bit about yourself. And, in my experience, the simplest way to do that is to tell your story in a blog.

< Week 5: what about me?

Next in the series: plugging into the system >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Now, reading all this you might be saying, “This is all well and good but, frankly, I can’t write,” and that’s a fair comment. After all, you’ve chosen the medium of film or clay or needlepoint rather than wordsmithing for a reason. How do you join this global conversation if you sort of write like a 10-year-old? Here’s a few ideas for a few sorts of creatives:

Cartoonist: Diary comics are a no brainer really. Don’t worry if your life is boring, just think of it as a daily drawing exercise.
Pottery: Video the creation of your pots, especially if you use a wheel.
Animator: As you’re working on a piece post up stills and trial clips.
Photographer: Go play on Flickr for a while and feed your work (and others’) into your blog.
Textiles: Photos of works in progress. Model clothes yourself.

You can probably adapt those ideas to all manner of things and no doubt think of many better ones.

But the big thing here is not to worry about creating something worthy of a Pulitzer on your blog. Use it to record what you’re up to. If you’re selling at a market take photos. If you’re giving a talk, record it and make the audio / video available. If you’ve been thinking about issues related to your craft, jot down some notes and ideas. Treat it as a scrapbook for your journey as a whatever-you-are.

And here’s the thing. No matter how mundane it might seem to you it’ll be fascinating to those who can’t do what you do, especially if they’re interested in the stuff you do, and they’re the sort of people you want to be interested in you.

< Week 4: getting personal

Next in the series: first impressions >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Blimey, I went off on one there. Sorry about that. You just want to know how you can use a blog to increase the audience and customer base for your creative endeavor and here I am wittering on about causality and intertwingularity and stuff. So let’s bring this down to earth with some real world examples.

Say you’re a photographer looking to develop your business in the area of portraiture and wedding photography. You’ve got a lovely website that shows off your best work and maybe even a section where clients and their friends and family can order prints online. Now, part of your appeal is your skill with the camera but another important part is your personality. You’re not just selling your art, you’re selling yourself.

Now you could have a page on your site with a biography but that’ll probably come all all contrived. What you want to do is talk to the potential clients in your own voice, telling them your story. A good example would be stevegerrarddiary.com where the titular photographer Steve Gerrard writes about the work he’s been doing. The hook is his jobs tend to veer between beautiful wedding shoots and dirty rock photography so each post will usually have a selection of shots from a couple’s happiest day juxtaposed with some hairy monster screaming on stage.

But that’s not why it works. What really comes home to me is how Steve’s character is brought out through the blog as he talks about his strange life. You feel like you know him and his family. Not too much, mind. He’s careful to keep the private private. But just enough that you’d feel comfortable asking him to record your wedding. At least I know I would.

Another great example is theblackapple.typepad.com, brought to my attention by Antonio Gould in is fifth New Media 4Cast for 4Talent. Here Emily Martin blogs about the stuff she sells on her etsy.com site. Etsy is sort of like eBay without the auctions and only for handmade items but while it’s great that you’re in a curated space (rather like, say, Camden market) it can be hard to rise above the crowds. You need to add more that just the details the site will let you enter. You need to add yourself. Emily does this brilliantly with her blog talking about the new products in her store, the motivations for creating them, and dropping in little nuggets about her own life. Again, nothing too detailed but enough that her readers can identify with her as an individual. And judging by the number of comments each post gets she’s developed a pretty dedicated community.

But there’s one very important thing that both Steve and Emily do that I haven’t mentioned. They both link to “the competition”, in Steve’s case other photographers he knows and likes, in Emily’s case other Etsy shops she buys stuff from. In a small way they’re setting themselves up as resources for their communities, partly because it makes sense to support your peers to build a sustainable environment but also because they’re human and that’s what humans do. And as other bloggers in their communities do the same the effect is quite dramatic as a network emerges that is structured and easily navigable yet always changing and evolving as people come and go. Nobody ever has a complete handle on what’s going on and no-one is in charge but it works.

< Week 3: everything is intertwingled

Next in the series: what about me? >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

When you stick something on the Internet it becomes part of the network. If your something is a fancy looking website that has pictures of the stuff you do and not much else then sure, it’ll be on the grid but only in the sense that the Isle of Feltar is part of the United Kingdom. It’s there but it’s not exactly engaging with the bustling hubs of the country. Which is fine, if that’s what you want, but you might want a little more from your something on the Internet. You might want it to actually engage.

If you want to connect with the rest of the Internet a blog is probably the best way to do it. Part of this is the conversational tone I mentioned before but a huge chunk of it comes down to the humble link.

You’re no doubt familiar with Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia that might not be accurate but by God it’s useful. And you’ve probably had that experience where you look up something, say the Island of Fetlar (and, by the way, doesn’t that sound just a little rude to you?), and within four clicks find yourself reading about Genoa Cathedral. Or hermit crabs. Or melodic death metal. Or kittens. And it might seem incredibly random and at times absurd that these things are somehow connected. But they are.

Just as the multiplex nature of causality gives the illusion of free will so the complexity of the inter-linked Internet gives the illusion of random chaos to such a degree that it can be hard to see how you might engage with this. But it can be done. Once you understand, in the words of Ted Nelson, that everything is deeply intertwingled, then you’re on the road to getting it right.

< Week 2: the social internet

Next in the series: getting personal >

This post forms part of a series. Read the first installment.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Last week I alluded to how writing for blogs is different to writing for print, but don’t think that means it’s inferior. Professional writers who trade on the value of their words often find it incredibly hard to adapt to the medium. They’re locked into a particular style that serves their purpose, be it journalism’s Inverted Pyramid and short paragraphs or the structure of an academic essay.

What I think defines a typical blog post is how conversational it is. The tone will be closer to a letter and quite often it won’t be reporting all the facts or making a coherent argument, but raising a topic or continuing a discussion. In itself a blog post can seem lightweight and frivolous, obsessed with some minutiae and addressing a niche audience, which is possibly why professional writers can sometimes be a little dismissive. And rightly so. Blogging, as I’m defining it, is quite terrible at the sort of things academics and journalists do. But it’s also quite wonderful at things they don’t do.

Blogging is part of what’s become known as The Social Internet, which essentially boils down to people talking about stuff. Stuff is a very powerful currency online and takes all sorts of shapes. Facebook is a good model of how this works. A blogger once described Facebook as a really fancy bookshelf where you put things – books you’ve read, movies you like, photos you’ve taken, diary entries you’ve written, events you’re attending and links to cool stuff so you can show them off to visitors.

And then magic happens as Facebook takes your stuff and throws it into your network of friends. Suddenly these things are no longer dumb objects, but the foundations on which social interaction can take place. More critically this stuff generates more stuff. A photo from a party will spawn a conversation about the party, which in turn encourages others to post photos of the party. During these conversations the next party is planned, which spawns more photos and more conversations.

And that’s just a simple linear example. If you’re using Facebook have a look at how you use it. Look at how it maps the connections between people based on the things they do on there. Now apply this to the whole Internet and you’ll start to get an idea of where I’m coming from.

< Week 1: blogging vs. print

Next in the series: everything is intertwingled >

We have a date lined up with the enigmatic Holy Moly as part of our new radio series… and are looking for opinionated bloggers, tabloid journos with a thirst for gossip, or anyone with the style and attitude to get the conversation flowing with one of the media’s most elusive figures.

More info on the Head to Head page.

Words: Pete Ashton
Illustration: Raymond Weekes

Hi, I’m Pete Ashton and I’ve been messing about with weblogs for years now. After The Guardian went and gave one of my blogs a fancy media award Nick at 4Talent magazine asked if I’d write this masterclass on running a weblog. Since the blog in question was Created in Birmingham (now run by Chris Unitt), linking up Birmingham’s creative and cultural communities, and that I do a fair bit of consulting and evangelising about the wonderful world of blogging, it seemed like a no-brainer really. So here goes.

The thing is I write for blogs, not those strange magazine things. How do you link to other stuff in a magazine? Where do the comments go? I’m sure it’s a perfectly valid form of communication but I’m really not at home there. I’m more comfortable on a blog: you wouldn’t ask a filmmaker to communicate through the medium of interpretive dance, would you?

Next in the series: the social internet >