Leadership blogging?
The workshop that I enjoyed most at the Budapest conference was the masterclass on blogging/vlogging/podcasting, hosted by Griff Wigley. Griff was the “blogging coach” for a project to get UK councillors blogging called ReadMyDay.
Griff’s full presentation is available here (downloads as a powerpoint file), but I thought I’d give some edited highlights…
Griff’s tips for running a successful councillor-blog include:
- take photos to liven up the posts
- link and get linked
- answer your email with the blog (obviously not sensitive casework, but regularly-asked questions can be answered publicly)
He reckoned that the advantage of blogging as a councillor is that you can use your blog to “leverage” your activities and interactions (Google tells me that the verb “to leverage” is variously, an Americanism for gearing where companies will use a limited asset base to generate substantial borrowings for speculative or business purposes, or, more prosaically, that leverage is using given resources in such a way that the potential positive or negative outcome is magnified) - in other words, make the most impact with what you’re doing by making sure that you tell people about it, record it, and it’s on the internet forever more.
Griff also talked about how blogging adds believeability and makes the officeholder appear a real person, and how the discipline of recording what you are doing helps clarify your thinking, and allows you to chronicle how you form your opinions on issues. Both of these are real to me - putting my thoughts out there regularly and trying to remain consistent not across one conversation but across months and years of blog archives is the greatest spur to thinking through before pressing publish, and one of the reasons that I started doing this was to show that normal (ish) and young people can be and are parliamentary candidates, members of the Labour party, and councillors.
Of course, he also acknowledges the pitfalls - that you should only post what you’d want to read in the Oxford Mail; that you should be wary of conflicts of interest and be clear about alerting your readers to them; that blogging can take over your life.
Anyway, it looks like ReadMyDay was/is a great project, and there’s some useful-looking resources available here.
yawn how middle class
Most crucially, blogging involves passion and commitment, that is the essential requirement. It also needs to be appealing to keep their readers, and that depends very much on their own style.
I don’t understand why our Government paid for local councillors to go to Budapest and attend this event, aren’t there similar courses in the UK at the same price? Do you know how many councillors attended from the UK, as well as other parts of Europe?
Ellee - it wasn’t a training event for local councillors, there were about five of us there from the UK who weren’t speakers. My understanding was that we were invited to add to the mix of attendees and to bring the experience of elected members who are involved in e-democracy.
While Lebanon burns you fart on about blogging. You are happy to see muslims killed because they are anti-gay. If the Israelis were bombing gay people you would be chaining yourself to the Israeli embassy.
Gay people aren’t pledged to fight “a war until the elimination of Israel and the extermination of the last Jew on earth” though, are they Respect? Still, you come to ‘glorify’ people with that ambition.
Thanks for the kind comments and excellent summary, Antonia.
I’ve blogged your entry with a couple of photos:
http://icele.wordpress.com/2006/08/05/councillor-antonia-blance/
You are happy to see muslims killed because they are anti-gay.
What a riddiculous lie! Do you know how stupid you’ve made yourself out to be. I hate the Left, but I’ve yet to see anyone from that end of the political divide (not even Johnn Hari) called for Muslims to be killed for homophobia.
Get a grip man!
Britblog Roundup # 77…
Welcome back. In UK blogging news this week, well, there’s a couple of books out. Girl With a One Track Mind was, at least at one point this week, top of the Amazon pre-order lists. I have a feeling that…
I implore you all to make the time to visit this link and watch this report.
I am ashamed to say I was initially reluctant to do so myself…content with
knowing without really knowing. This video has changed everything. It has
also been a great reminder that nationality or religion does not define a
person..rather a man is shaped by his personal beliefs and moral
courage…something that in times such as these one can so easily forget or
actually consciously refuse to make that distinction.
To all good-willed people,
please, please, please, please, please, take the time to watch this.
Its a little more than an hour. If you have any feelings what so ever i erge you to send this link to others so that people can see that there is two sides to every story and we are only seeing one side.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6604775898578139565&q=palestine+pro
Keep going and ignore the cynicism. If you are running for something, at least you are running, whether it’s tory, lib dem or labour. Many people are standing still or going backwards. Best of luck