What Makes A Great Blog?

Some great tips from Matt Thompson at "What Makes A Great Blog: Principles for Success: A Poynter/NewsU Webinar."

Thompson's favorite blogs:
Romenesko
Dallas ISD
The Daily Dish
Lifehacker
Kottke
Lemondrop

Thompson said he organized his blogs by priority the "rock stars" and "great reads," using a RSS feed at www.google.com/reader

Thompson also talked about the 7 ways to affectively blog

Focus, Frequency, Links, Community, Voice, Visuals and Workflow

Focus: What is your niche? Aggregate and be aggregated. What purpose do you want your blog to fulfill?

Before you start ask: What is your shared interest? How will people engage with one another? How will you attract more people to your blog?

Frequency: ask: What brings us back? Make sure there is a reason for people to come back to you, Thompson said. Posting frequently is the key to boosting blog popularity, however, great content trumps everything - if you only post once a week make sure it's great content. He suggested a daily round-up and using comment as posts.

Links: Give love to get love. Thompson suggests trackback - post links to other blogs - they may link back to yours and help you increase your community. He said it's important to engage in other blogs. He suggested using http://blogsearch.google.com

Other key suggestions: It's the value of the short post. People like links and lists.

Community: It's like being a beat reporter - get to know your community - engage with them and think of ways to strengthen that bond ... perhaps a live chat or create a post from their comments - it'll increase your frequency and let them know you are listening. Encourage interaction but set clear boundaries - let them know up front that if they do not play nice - they will not be allowed to play at all.

Voice: Decide what the blog is going to be. Is it going to be a behind the scenes way of how you get your stories and then write them? Is it a way keep track of how you digest the news? Is it a journal of the receipts you try? According to Thompson first person does not decrease your credibility.

Visuals: Thompson called it "The 1,000 foot view," looking at a blog from far away. He suggests using photos or other tools to break up large blocks of text to keep people from being overwhelmed visually - the value of digression!

Workflow: Think of it as just another tool in your tool box. Make it work for you, integrate it into your workflow: write a short post "teaser" about the interesting interview you just did or the question that won't stop nagging you. Then close the circle and Tweet or Direct Message (DM) or Facebook (FB) that the story is done and send people to it.

This will increase your frequency.

Other tips: Let people know you blog - use your byline ... add to newspaper byline - reporter blogs regularly at www.yaddayadda.com

Absorb your competition - link to them but be the place to come for all the news on your issue.

It's a great place for College students to cut their teeth. They must own the process of blogging, direct their own focus and content. Get them excited about the ownership, Thompson said.

Remember it's not a column - it's organic - it will grow as you grow.

Finally, Thompson said there is not one way to blog - start slow with a basic blog - let it expand has your community grows.

For more classes at Poynter check out Poynter News U

Visit Thompson at SnarkMarket, vita.mn

If you want to read hash tags from the class on Twitter search #nuwebinar