Blogging

Element Descriptor

Sharing your ideas, opinions, analysis of issues and how you’re processing emotions online in a clear, concise and engaging manner can have quite an impact for both the author and audience. It is there as both a record and can be used to discuss and debate ideas with other interested parties and can usefully complement other forms of communication via social media and meatspace. A decent blog can help amplify your group’s messages, recruit supporters and allies, counter information published by others trying to undermine your work as well as helping getting things out of your head or off your chest.

Level descriptors

Novice	Practitioner	Expert	Ninja
You can draft an article about something that’s recently happened such as a meeting or event that you attended from notes that you’ve previously made, which may include some links to other documents or webpages. It is clear, concise and easy to read using simple conversational language or where technical terms / abbreviations are used they’re explained or expanded upon first use. Someone else will proof it for errors and post it on your behalf.	You can draft up a blog post on more complex or nuanced issues that goes beyond reporting facts or events into your personal opinion on an issue or event. You have developed a voice and writing style that might be more individual to you rather than emulating someone else or keeping it mute. You have learnt how to post blog articles yourself and second opinions are less for proofing and more for constructive input. Posts are still well referenced where required to explain technical terms, abbreviations & acronyms to keep the audience as wide as possible.	You can quickly rustle up blog articles on a wide variety of topics and issues that are of interest to you, the group and your audience. You have a decent dialogue and understanding with a number of your readers and there’s a good back-and-forth between yourself and other bloggers on the posts you write. They’re always high quality, error free, and easy to follow / understand. The arguments you present are compelling and allows your to expand your audience with potential media interest in republishing some of your posts.	You are basically the blogging equivalent to a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. Your blogging is pretty much your profession and you should be getting awards and a wage for your writing. You’ve got a large social media following / audience that regularly amplify your message that creates an ever-expanding bubble of follower. You find pieces being picked up by media outlets and you are being tapped up by media and publishing companies to work for them rather in ever-more lucrative deals than write on some blog anymore.

Element Overview Essay

This is a draft. If something doesn’t make sense, or you see typos, or if you have further ideas, please email us on contact@activecitizenshiptoolkit.net

The cause of blogging done badly is simply that as Tom Lehrer said, most popular songs are written by the people. Meaning that unless you’ve received journalistic training, you’re probably going to learn by trial and error. And the feedback that you get on most blogs is minimal and can be confusing. So, you might do a very well crafted blog about something that most people do not care about, and get like 10 hits and no comments. Or you might dash off something that is poorly constructed has typos, but it’s about a controversial issue. And it gets retweets and lots of views and four or five comments and then you can learn the wrong lesson.

The consequences of not blogging well. Ultimately, you won’t have as many readers and you won’t have as much credibility and you won’t get your messages such as they are across. And you’re less likely to spark dialogues, which is what you hope blogging is about.

So the fix is a little bit complicated, but it’s asking people who are trained to cast their eyes over some of your blogs, and rewrite them, edit them, suggest improvements, and then explain the rationale that they’ve got for each of those. In addition, think about what kind of blog posts you’re writing. Some of them might be very newsy. In which case, follow the news format in the first paragraph, we need the who, what, why, where when.

 If they’re more essay length long-form, that’s fine. But you still need a hook. And you still need to signpost, the reader as to what is about to happen, what is happening and what has happened. Tell them what you’re going to say say it tell them what you told them.

Development Resources

Assessment Resources