Online Journalism News

Meet the Trainers: Martin Belam - Learning how to blog smart

Journalism.co.uk has lined up a host of great trainers for our short courses covering social media, podcasting and search engine optimisation for journalists and other communications professionals.

Next Friday (June 5) Martin Belam (pictured), information architect at the Guardian, takes our one-day course on blogging: how to get started, how to get your blog found and how to develop it as a brand.

In the first of a series of interviews with the trainers, Journalism.co.uk asks Belam, who blogs at currybetdotnet, for his top tips on social media as a tool for journalists:

When did you first start blogging and why?
The first post on currybetdotnet went up on Christmas Eve, December 2002. I'd first really been exposed to blogging when I was at the BBC, working on a re-design of their site search. Within hours of launch a link was passed around the team to a blog post by Tom Coates who had mocked up an 'improved' design. I was impressed with how quickly the web had responded to a specific change on a specific website, even if irritated by his cheekiness!

I then went on to work closely at the BBC with a group of people who blogged, like Matt Jones, Lee Harker, Tom Dolan and Paul Hammond. One day I just decided that 'I could do that too'.

How has blogging aided your professional work?
Originally the blog focused very much on search engines, and at the end of March 2003 I published a long article based on an internal study I'd done of search engine use at the BBC - 'A day in the life of BBCi Search'.

This attracted a lot of attention inside and outside the BBC, and lead to a lot of invites to speak at search engine conferences and training events. I genuinely believe that almost everything I've done subsequently has been down, to some extent, to the blog.

Certainly whilst I was acting as an entirely independent internet consultant, the blog was very important for advertising the kind of work that I did and attracting potential clients. It has been useful within organisations as well, as I arrive with a reputation - people have some kind of expectation of the kind of work I do and the topics I'm interested in.

I also simply wouldn't underestimate the value of the discipline it has given me in researching, fact-checking and sitting down to write every single day. Like anything, constant practice makes your writing better.

What are the key challenges, in you experience, when introducing journalists and non-bloggers to the medium?
For non-bloggers I think there is still a perception that there is a higher barrier to entry than there actually is. You can get going on blogging services without having to invest in your own domain name and hosting - although if you are going to be very serious about it, then I would suggest that you do eventually consider going down that route.

From a journalism point of view, I think there has been a tedious 'them and us' debate rumbling on for years which has been utterly misguided. If I want to read about old analogue synth kit, then nothing a mainstream newspaper or magazine produces is going to top AnalogSuicide. But if Yamaha were going bust, I'd still want the FT to analyse why for me.

Not all journalists make great bloggers, and not all bloggers want to be journalists or 'do citizen journalism'. Yes, there are some terrible blogs about kittens out there, but then again, journalists can't always take the moral high ground - someone has to write the news features for Your Cat Magazine.

A full list of Journalism.co.uk's courses can be see on the training pages. For more information or to book a place, contact ed at journalism.co.uk.

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