Blogging for Human Rights
A blog is an online journal. Like a journal, blogs are written episodically: one piece at a time over a period. Blogs are usually about a single person or specific subject.
Successful blogs are a mixture of informing, opinion, reporting, action alerts, and analysis.They can give perspective, illustrate a subject, provide humour or comic relief, and delve into a topic in-depth. Blogs are a good platform for the often-unquantifiable emotional quotient of a topic. Blogs have a funny way of getting people hooked.
Blogs also allow comments, and blogging is a fundamentally conversational communication tool. Comments are a powerful way to engage readers, but they are a serious commitment. If you are not prepared to moderate and reply to comments on your blog, ask yourself seriously if blogging is really for you. Its ok if it isn't, blogging's not for everyone.
A post is an entry in a blog. The foundation of a blog posts are stories.
A good post tells a story from beginning to end and still leaves the reader wanting more. Like stories, individual blog posts can be short or long, silly or serious. A post might have a purpose, like inspiring a specific activity (signing petition, joining a group, etc.), but telling a story is still the best way to motivate blog readers. Dryly rehashing press releases and public statements is a big turn-off. The best posts “own” the topic, get creative, and use story-telling to make a topic come alive. And, above all, the best posts are valuable to readers, even if that value is simply entertainment.
So, good blogs are useful and interesting. They are also generally personable and approachable. They respect their readers’ intellect, and motivate people to keep coming back.
The best blogs are also about reality. From post to post, or even inside a post, being about reality could mean the reality of a person’s emotions, or the reality of witnessing something that really happened in the world. Either way, a firm grasp of reality is what gives blogs credibility and impact.
Blog posts can be written by one person or a team of contributors. If a blog is written with others, each person should be free to contribute their own posts to the blog, and they should each have a profile on the site. Guest contributors should be introduced and profiled on their post. The only reason to have an anonymous blog or blog post is to protect the identity of the blogger.
Finally, blogging is fun and rewarding. Once you get into it, potential posts will start popping up in your work and life, like tiny mushrooms of inspiration. Connections made through your blog can be extremely rewarding.
Don’t be afraid to try; blogging just might grow on you.
A good trick for starting a blog post is to begin by writing: I want to tell you the story of...” or “I want to tell you about...” or “I want to tell you why... and then finish the sentence. Complete the post, and then return to your first sentence and delete the text above.
