E-Media Tidbits

blogtalkradio.com/sreetips Columbia j-school prof Sree Sreenivasan has a new podcast.

As I was browsing through Facebook's journalism community this week, I stumbled upon an event that I immediately RSVPed for Blogging for Journalists: Best Practices, a webinar hosted by Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Journalism Professor (and Poynter Online contributor). Using BlogTalkRadio, he recently started Sreetips radio -- a free online audio discussion about technology where listeners can call in questions to a phone number or type in questions to a chat (the inaugural topic was Facebook for Journalists).

In his second installment, he shares ideas for how to get started blogging, especially through a conversation with David Kohn, medicine and science reporter for the Baltimore Sun who recently started a medical blog. If you want, you can listen to the original the 30-minute show for yourself. Here are a few of his suggestions:

Get out there. Make a list of your connections, e-mail them your URL, and then impress them. Use strong writing and interesting subjects to make a good first impression with users.

Provide unique material. See what's already out there and provide content that satisfies a need not being met already.

Create a series that could be useful to a specific audience. He suggests for a medical blog a series like "If I have (enter illness this here), then I should do (enter recommendations here)." Create weekly posts filling in the blank with different topics. After several posts, you'll likely have a robust resource that could climb higher in the Google's page rankings.

Post frequently. When users come to your blog and find something new, they'll find there's a reason to keep checking back for more.

Here's what I asked Sree in the online chat: What is the "idea blog environment?" How do you suggest to encourage active discussions on your blog?

Sree's initial response: Turn on your comments.

"You want to go where the cool kids are," he said. If no one is commenting you're not likely to entice others to comment either.

He advises to change the your tone or structure so you direct people to comment. Provoke people. On Poynter Online, we often pose questions to our users at the end of our blog entries. Pose open-ended and thoughtful lead-in questions. Some suggestions of what has worked for us:

• What have your experiences been ...?
• What advice do you have ...?
• What have you learned ...?

And finally something I've learned from blogging, engage your audience after you post. When someone comments, respond to them with another comment and keep the conversation going.

So in practicing what Sree's suggesting, here are my questions for Tidbits readers:

• What have your best blogging experiences been ...?
• What advice do you have for bloggers ...?
• What have you learned by blogging or reading blogs ...?