Prompted by the launch of the University’s new Academic Blogging Service, I’ve recently been thinking about why we run our blog, and what advice we would give to others on departmental blog strategy.

The Academic Blogging Service allows University staff and research postgraduates to:

• develop a School, departmental, unit or other community blog
• develop a personal blog – to promote research or to reflect on ideas
• use blogs for teaching, learning and/or assessment purposes

Academic Blogging Service

The new service led me to thinking about the reasons we set up our blog in the first place – both technical and editorial/strategic.

Technical considerations

When we first launched our blog, we had Callum Kerr in the team. He put a great deal of effort into setting up our blog – his recap post gives some idea of the considerations to put in place when running a blog for yourself.

Building the website programme blog

Callum’s sadly now left (to help develop the new platform!), and with him his expertise in WordPress. So we’ll be glad to move to the new supported service.

Departmental blog strategy

We put consideration into what:

• place our blog would have in our communications strategy
• the purpose of our blog would be
• content would it contain
• schedule we would keep
• categories would that content fit into
• editorial standards we would adhere to
• review process we would complete

When we started our blog, we created a strategy document to ensure cohesion across the team. I’ve included a version below, as this could serve as a starting point for others thinking of creating a departmental blog.

Departmental Blog Strategy

Training materials

I was delighted to get an early look at the training materials for those who will use the new service. It was a really thought-provoking session: Lorna Campbell has produced a suite of materials that will help anyone thinking about creating a blog to understand the benefits of blogging, with great links to further reading and examples of a range of different styles.

Blogging to Build your Professional Profile training materials