Freelance Unbound

Not getting your news from the newspapers? Just Buy One Anyway. Help these newspaper professionals trapped in a dying industry…
How can you look into those soulful newsdesk eyes and fail to dig deep?

As a kind of coda to this week’s series on blog longevity, here’s a nice (and long) video from Tim Ferriss about how to make blogging easy. Lots of good stuff here.
https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.12
Key points:

• You don’t have to post every day (he posts two or three times a week)
• Write your passion – not your focus group
• Don’t chase topicality (he’s not a journalist though)
• Make it fun

There’s also loads of material on visitor statistics, making best use of the design of your page and using other platforms such as Twitter. Great stuff.
[HT: Bristoleditor]

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5
The last part of this series on keeping a blog going beyond the point at which most people give up is all about interaction.
5) Have a conversation
Blogging is a lonely business – which is why most people prefer hanging out on Facebook with their mates. But blogging at its best is a conversation.
If you want proof, check out Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog – it says it explicitly on the masthead.
But it’s easier said than done, of course. To have a conversation requires people not only to actually read your blog, but also to take the trouble to respond to your posts in the comment threads.
Yesterday I suggested it was a good idea to spend time commenting on other blogs. This is only partly to get your blog address published around the web. It’s also to build relationships with other bloggers.
Develop a network of like-minded bloggers and you benefit in a number of ways:

• Links – either in their blogroll or in individual posts. This helps with Google rankings as well as traffic
• Comments – this keeps your blog lively, shows visitors you are more than a community of just one, and also helps feed you material for new posts
• Feedback – this can help you spot problems with your blog, show where you’re doing something right, and also make you feel you’re not talking to yourself in a padded cell
• Traffic – as discussed yesterday, more visitors is more motivation to post material

Developing relationships in the blogging world has other advantages:

• Guest posts – writing for other blogs lets you reach a different audience and raises your profile, like these ones I wrote for FleetStreetBlues
• Guest post input – allowing other relevant bloggers access to your blog is also worth doing: you pick up some of their audience and you encourage fresh input. You can also relax as someone else does the hard work for a day. (But don’t just take in anyone off the street – make sure there’s a good fit between your work and theirs)
• Joint posts – this one I put together with Soilman helped bring in new readers and comments, and also helped me creatively with fresh ideas

Crucially, all of this is a big boost to you, the lonely blogger. It’s far better for your blog to be a way of interacting with the wider world than a silent noticeboard of your innermost thoughts – no matter how profound.
If you do want to keep going with a blog – and I strongly recommend journalism students and new graduates do, especially in the current economic climate – having feedback that your content actually matters to like-minded people is a tremendous boost.
Be realistic
Finally, have a sense of perspective. (This kind of makes it six pillars, I guess, but I think we’ve all had enough.)
High-profile political blogger Guido Fawkes says more than 100 daily visitors is pretty successful in blogging terms these days. And the New York Times quoted Technorati chief executive Richard Jalichandraas as saying: “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”
This means you shouldn’t beat yourself up about not having thousands of visitors. But follow the advice in the five pillars and you should be able to develop a thriving blog in weeks and months rather than years.
Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5
The fourth part of this week’s series on keeping your blog going is about readership.
4) Build an audience
A big problem for the new blogger is writing into a void. Without a readership or feedback, generating posts can feel pretty pointless.
The solution at first is simply to pretend you have one. Imagine a range of interested or curious readers who might stumble across your blog and write for them. Try out different tones of voice, different rhythms and different topics. The fact that you probably don’t have an audience at first should encourage you to relax into your writing and become more confident.
But that only lasts so long. Pretty soon, it will get lonely typing into your WordPress or Blogger window and you’ll need some companionship to encourage you to keep going.
Market your blog
That’s why it’s important to learn how to market your blog as well as to create its content.

• Comment on other blogs. Spend time visiting other blogs in related fields and take part in the discussion. Pick ones with a big audience and add your comments
• Add your blog address to your email signature. You’d be surprised how many people will take a quick look. If your blog is at all interesting you will pick up some readers.
• Join other social networking sites. People find their way to Freelance Unbound from my Twitter page and vice versa. And since I started to get quite a bit of traffic via Facebook when I blogged about the graduate show of UCA journalism students, I’ve updated my Facebook profile with the FreelanceUnbound web address too.
• Add relevant blogs to your blogroll. Mention other relevant blogs and add a link to your homepage. This will probably be reciprocated by at least some bloggers.
• Get listed. Submit your blog to as many blog listings as you can. For journos, the Journalism.co.uk blog listing is one place to start. You’ll need to register and log in before you can add your URL to the listing. Try out sites such as Technorati and BlogCatalog as well – it can’t hurt.

Getting in contact with other bloggers has other benefits too, but we’ll talk about that more tomorrow.
Create compelling content
Creating good, relevant content is also key to building up an audience.
Web search is very important to draw in passing trade. A recent post on ProBlogger suggested 8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers. Top of the list was compelling content [HT: Bristol Editor].
But some content is more compelling than others. The usual roster includes best-of lists, tips and advice to do something specific and topical comment. A very good post on blog content is here.
Finally: The last entry is all about making friends online and having a nice chat.
Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5

I’ve been meaning to put this together for a while. They’re more or less sequential and all in chronological order.
Sadly a whole pile of papers I was collecting got ditched when I turned my back, but this crop pretty much reeks of the fear and loathing that infected the City at the end of last year.
It’s all better now though…

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5
Part three of a series on how to keep going with a blog, even when you’d rather stick pencils in your eyes rather than open another bloody WordPress window.
Today, advice to alleviate the loneliness of the long-distance blogger.
3) Pace yourself
It’s difficult enough to write anything every day, but writing a daily 1,000 word, opinion-led piece on a topic relevant to your blog is impossible. Trust me – I know.
One of the most common problems I see in my journalism students is that they run out of steam and get demotivated because they just can’t write an essay each day – or even each week – for their blog.
The answer’s simple, though. Don’t do it.
Instead, pace yourself. Write a long, essay-style post once in a while – say once a month or once a fortnight. Then fill in the rest of the days with shorter posts.
Short posts can be anything you fancy:

• A quick comment on an event or news report
• A photo with a witty/incisive caption
• A video clip
• An opinion poll

These are quick to produce, and don’t take up too much energy. But they can really work. Audiences like a change of pace too – too many long posts can be a bit offputting.
Crucially, don’t try to make your post too complex. Stick to one key thought.
Looking back over Freelance Unbound recently, I’ve realised I’ve been producing more long posts than short – and I should mix it up more. It’s good for your sanity as well as for that of your readers.
And, while long posts are the ones that will probably keep readers coming back for more, once they realise your blog has some real meat to offer, short posts are often the ones that attract their attention in the first place.
I found this out when a throwaway joke post got sent to Reddit and doubled my traffic in a day.
Frequency and timing
Part of pacing yourself is figuring out how often to post and when to do it.
My traffic is light at the weekend – as most people come here during the working week. This means I don’t worry so much about posting on Saturday and Sunday. It’s nice to put a short post in, but not critical.
But since the weekend has lots of spare time to write in, I can get some of the work done then – then schedule the posts to appear the following week.
It’s worth trying to build up a small backlog of non-time-critical posts that you can spread over a few days or use to fill in when you don’t have the time – or motivation – to write something new.
And while posting every day is a good goal, two or three times a week is fine – if you are reliable about doing it. Consistency is important. Don’t get all excited and post two or three times a day for a week and then leave it for days with nothing because you run out of steam. That’s not good for you or your readers either.
The multiple post
The great thing about a long post is that you can carve it up into shorter ones. Which works well for structured tips like this one.
I was going to run this complete, but it broke down naturally into five sections – which handily enough fills a working week.
Readers get bite-sized chunks they can digest easily, while you get the benefit of a breather after the effort of writing 2,000 words or more.
There are other benefits. If your series gets picked up by other sites or bloggers, there’s a chance you’ll get more than one link out of it. They’re human too – as they update their site each day, hey, there’s a new link for them to offer their readers. You get to help with their pacing too.
It doesn’t always work. Often a list of tips works better if the tips are shorter, punchier and all together. This can also help with getting a post spread via Twitter, say.
But you could get the best of both worlds by summarising a series of longer posts in a round-up at the end.
Develop a rhythm in your posting and you can develop a habit in them. And that’s the key to keeping going for longer than a few weeks.
Next up: Make sure there’s someone out there reading this stuff.
Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5
Yesterday’s tip for blogging longevity was all about strategy. Today’s is more about content.
2) Have a focus
This is all about what the blog is creatively, rather than strategically.
You can blog about anything, obviously, but it helps to have a focus creatively. However, this means a bit more than simply the subject matter.
If you’re interested in movies, say, you’ll be wanting to write a film blog. But what will its actual focus be? Who is it trying to reach – and what is it offering them?
Are you simply going to review and recommend films? Or will you focus on a genre? Maybe you want to concentrate on a discipline, such as special effects. Or a period – like the 1970s.
And what will the content offer? Advice on how to get into the business? Showbiz gossip? (Loads of people do this, remember – it’s difficult to stand out.) Insight into how movies are made?
Who are you writing for?
Implicit in this is your audience. A clear focus will help you figure out who your potential audience is, and therefore help you figure out what it is you’re trying to say.
Sure, you can be as general as you like – but concentrating on a specific niche can be helpful for a number of reasons.

• Credibility: You can build a reputation as something of an expert
• Audience: You can carve out an area that few other bloggers cover – which helps give people a reason to visit
• Focus: You have more of an idea about what kinds of things to post about

This last one is important for longevity, because it’s a big help with blogger’s block. Having a clear niche can keep you on track and help you develop a longer-term editorial plan for your blog.
This is a blog largely about journalism, for example. But more specifically, it is about the impact of digital media on journalism and publishing, and also on journalism teaching.
Plan ahead
As the focus of Freelance Unbound has become clearer, I’ve been able to plan ahead more with ideas for longer posts, like this one, while at the same time using the blog to react to news.
The downside is if your focus is quite narrow it can become a bit constricting. That’s why I gave myself room at the start to talk about stopframe animation too, as this is an interest of mine and I thought I might need the variety. But I try to link the pieces together where possible – posting about teaching animation workshops for example.
Let it grow
And don’t be afraid to let your blog evolve. As time has moved on, I’ve decided that one function of the blog will be as a resource for journalism students.
All my workshop notes will be posted on here, and some of the posts will be aimed specifically at students. They may not read them at the time – but having the posts available means I can link back to them in class notes.
One important side effect is that this gives me extra motivation to put material up here, as it will help me in preparing classroom work in future.
But motivation and focus aside, it’s still a bit of a marathon to keep posting. Which is why tomorrow we’ll look at how to pace yourself for the long haul…
Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5

The Mail on Sunday‘s Facebook/MI6 revelations are something of a digital media wet dream, combining espionage, social networking and Nazi historians in a way that is almost the highbrow version of Friday’s midget/wrestling/hooker fest.
There’s a lot going on here of interest – and it’s worth coming back to. But for now, though, it’s enough to point out the Mail on Sunday is almost certainly fudging the facts.
The headline says:

MI6 chief blows his cover as wife’s Facebook account reveals family holidays, showbiz friends and links to David Irving

But at no point does the article really back up the claim that the link to David Irving was revealed through Facebook.
Yes, it says: “Lady Shelley Sawers’ extraordinary lapse […] revealed that the intelligence chief’s brother-in-law – who holidayed with him last month – is an associate of the controversial Right-wing historian David Irving.”
But actually it doesn’t substantiate this. When it comes to the TV and radio actors they know, Facebook photos are reproduced. But the Irving link seems second-hand. 
The Mail’s chain of association is this:

Among those featured in family photographs on the website is Lady Sawers’ half-brother Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat. 

So far, so good. Well, he’s a family member, so you’d kind of expect that.
Here’s the next link in the chain:

Mr Haig-Thomas is an associate and researcher for revisionist historian David Irving, who was jailed for three years in Austria in 2006 for ‘glorifying the Nazi Party’ because he questioned whether the Holocaust took place.

But the photo of Haig-Thomas at a garden party held by Irving actually comes from David Irving’s site (the Mail credits this in the story); while a quote about Haig-Thomas’s research work for Irving comes from Irving himself – which I doubt is featured on Lady Sawers’ Facebook Wall. 
So what’s going on here? 
I think it’s a bit of careless subbing coupled with wishful thinking. Sure, some material linking Lady Sawers’ half-brother with David Irving might have been on her Facebook page. But is it was, why wasn’t it reproduced? 
I suspect this is the usual Mail-style mix-up that conflates one story (careless management of sensitive digital personal information) with another (Nazi link to top UK spy boss) in a kind of journalistic mash-up.
Which is probably about as close as the Mail on Sunday will get to really grasping the world of social networking and web 2.0. 
More to come, probably – if anyone has any more details about the whole Facebook/Irving link, do share…
[HT: Jessica]

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5
I’ve posted before on the usefulness of blogging as a tool for journalism graduates, and journalists trying to make the move from print to online.
But a key challenge is how to keep going, day after day, week after week, month after grinding month.
As noted by the New York Times, some 95% of the blogs catalogued by Technorati have been left to die, unmourned and unloved. The upside of this is that it frees up the field for committed bloggers to build up a profile and an audience online.
But how do you stay committed? Over the course of this week I’ll be talking about five key strategies that will help newish bloggers to stay the course. Here’s number one…
1) Have a reason
First ask yourself, why are you doing this?
It may seem obvious, but a lot of bloggers are a bit vague about blogging. They think it’s kind of a good idea, or they want to be creative – or a journalism lecturer like me tells them to. But they don’t really have a compelling rationale for setting up and maintaining their blog.
This is death to consistent output. Set very clear goals and you’re much better off. It will also help you keep your blog on track creatively too.
Some possible goals:

• To get a job: Perhaps the most important. For students, building up a blog for their portfolio can be fantastically helpful in showcasing your ability to [a] deliver work consistently and [b] know the ropes of the internet. Crucially – focus on the job you are hoping to get when you get stuck for inspiration or motivation. The blog is just a tool to get you an interview, a work placement, or real paid work.
• To learn about blogging: As I’ve got involved with teaching online journalism, it’s important that I understand how it works at the sharp end. So it’s important that I maintain a blog and learn how everything works – from embedding video to web statistics. Again – this is a great learning tool and it helps to think of your blog in this way.
• To build your profile: As the recession deepened and I started getting involved in teaching, I decided to use the blog to develop a higher profile in both journalism and academia. A blog can be a useful tool to do this – as long as you update consistently.
• To develop discipline: It’s tough to write quickly and well, but there’s no room for writer’s block if you want to be a journalist – especially if you are freelance. Forcing yourself to keep a blog is a big help for developing the discipline to write with no external deadline.

There are bound to be others depending on your situation. Spending some time before you start thinking about what you are trying to achieve is very valuable.
Focusing on why you are blogging can help you keep you plugging away when you are tempted to quit. And understanding why your blog is important to you is the key to that.
There’s a good post on the changing face of the blogosphere on Laura McKenna’s Apt. 11d blog [HT: Megan McArdle]. It may not be a route to fame and riches in itself, but it has valuable uses. She says, rightly:

Use your blogs to target particular audiences and have a clear mission, and you’ll get a following

Crucially, your reason for blogging is not the same as what you are blogging about. And you can find out all about that tomorrow in part two…
Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5

Midgets, hookers, wrestling: seriously – what more could a sub ask for?