Blogging guidelines

Specific to this class

  1. When you are writing in response to an in-class exercise, you shouldn't merely summarize what you did. One useful type of entry would contrast two different tools, describing the results that you got on specific queries; or maybe you would contrast your experiences (good or bad) with different tools.
  2. Another interesting entry would describe the applicability of a class of tools (e.g., email alerts, blog search) or a specific tool (e.g., Technorati) to the research you are doing for this class.
  3. Your audience is a BBA who is not taking this class. It is not me. You are writing for another BBA at Ross.

General

  1. The goal of a blog entry is to inform the reader.
  2. A blog is a personal reaction to an event — it is not a news summary. If the reader wanted a news summary, then he/she would go to a news site. What the reader should learn from your site is 1) what news, events, and/or sites you are interested in (since these are the ones you react to), and 2) what your reaction is to the news, event, and/or site. The reader should gain some insight from reading your blog that he/she would not get from reading another blog.
  3. Each entry should be, at a minimum, 2-3 paragraphs with 2-3 sentences in each paragraph. Note that this is a minimum. If every one of your entries were this long, then it would receive a minimal grade. If every one of your entries were terribly long, then that would be overkill.
  4. The blog entry should be written within a context, and that context should be apparent to the reader. It should link to the Web resource that inspired the comment. A better link would:
    • Be contained within a sentence near the beginning of the blog entry
    • In certain circumstances, contain the most pertinent quote that you are interested in discussing. It's useful to include such a quote because many of the links that you add will end up disappearing, even by the end of the semester.
  5. A worse link would simply be made by saying "Click here for article" at the end of the blog entry (without saying the name of the article, without giving any clue as to what the article is).
  6. Better blog entries reflect insight or possibly a lot of research (and linking).

Some recent guidelines I've seen elsewhere are on this page.

Blogs from class in 2007

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