It takes more written words than it’s worth, so here we go with videos from people who have more talent than me and have taken the time.

…with Blogger, which has become a great platform for casual blogging nowadays, and is certainly the easiest place to start, much under-rated…

and WordPress — much slower, deeper video, but a much more powerful platform, IMHO…

There’s a little bit more to it than the videos show. But not that much.

In my opinion, buy a domain name from anyone (e.g. Bluehost, the service I use — they have been fine for the last two years and are dirt cheap) and map it to your wordpress.com account, or even better install wordpress on your own hosted server. (If you’re still with Blogger at this point, no problem — your host can map to that, too. WordPress can also import all your blogger posts if you want a fresh start).

Most hosting services, including Bluehost, but also GoDaddy and most of the rest, make that absurdly easy. Look for ‘Fantastico’ in their feature list. That’s a service that will allow you to ‘auto-install’ a load of website software, including WordPress. No technical skill required.

If that last couple of paragraphs sound like a foreign language, then a simple wordpress.com or blogger.com account will be a start. Just go to the address and open the account. It is really easy, as the videos describe. It’s also easy to just have a go and then delete the whole thing: then there’s no embarrassing past to be unearthed by someone. Just have a go and then delete the whole thing.

Once you’ve got some technical skill, or got someone in who has, you can customise to your heart’s content. Priorities: (1) more, better content; (2) that it doesn’t look like shit. Contrary to what the whole advertising and marketing world thinks, content is more important than appearance on the Internet. Get great content and no-one will care about the appearance. Get mediocre content and a great appearance and no-one will care, full stop.

Not looking like shit is an important, secondary priority. First choice (and you went for the hosted service option above, right?), choose from and implement one of the thousands of free themes at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. Second choice, get one of those and customise it bit yourself with Photoshop and a decent CSS editor. Option3: get your designer to create a custom job. If they can’t work with CSS, fire them (seriously).

Even if you’re not planning on blogging anytime soon, go into these services and make sure you have a decent user name, not like the user1238237@hotmail.com you ended up with when you were late to the party with web email. If people are searching for you on the web, they’re searching for ‘yourcompany’, not ‘yourcompany12921134’. You’ve probably already got .com and .co.uk names, but have you got the delicious, flickr, youtube, stumbleupon, etc. names? Gotta get them all. If you can.

Reserve good user names on every online service you can think of, even if you aren’t planning to use them straight away.

Look forward to comments, or get in touch if you want me to sort this sort of thing out for you.

• 46% of the online population in Asia have a blog (compared to just 8% of US web users).
• Almost half of all Asian bloggers (56%) are under 25, while 35% are 25 to 34 years old, and 9% are 35 years old and over. 74% of bloggers in Malaysia are under 25. Compare this to the US, where there is a much wider age spread: 46% of bloggers in the US are aged 30 or over.
• Females make up 64% of Malaysian bloggers compared to 46% in the US. On average, women make up 55% of Asian bloggers.
• More than 40% of Asian bloggers have less than 10 visitors per week.
• 74% of those in the survey find blogs by friends and family to be most interesting.
• About 50% believe blog content to be as trustworthy as traditional media. (Compare to 24% in Europe)
• 56% of those polled said they blogged in order to have an opinion space for themselves.

Asian bloggers are unlikely to read or write about politics and business issues, with the report describing these uses as ‘nascent’.

The main exceptions to this picture are South Korea and India. In Korea, blogging is huge, and their subject matter covers all walks of life. The figures aren’t available in these reports, but I’ve read elsewhere that around 90% of Koreans in their 20s have a Cyworld blog, and that there are perhaps 11.9mn bloggers across the entire population (48.3mn). Korea arguably skews the average figures given above upwards.

In India, blogging is a predominantly male activity, with only 24% of bloggers being female (which will skew the 55% average downwards). It’s also an exception when it comes to subject matter, since business-related blogs are very popular. Around half of Indian bloggers said they found business blogs most interesting, compared to a quarter in the other areas polled.

Update: Was a bit shy of offering any analysis in the original post, not being Asian. Just thinking about how India might skew the averages, it appears personal communications with friends and family are overwhelmingly the most popular use of blogs in the rest of Asia. According to Pew (op cit), this is quite different from the US: it isn’t a reason to blog for 40% of their research respondents and only a minor reason for a further 22%. The culture of blogging, personal and feminised for most of Asia, seems very different to the Western model where it appears to be very much a personal and professional public platform. Indian blogging, on the other hand, seems to be very much driven by entrepreneurial endeavour.

Ewan McIntosh has been good enough to provide his notes for a talk giving an introduction to blogging he gave at an LTS event. Archly titled ‘Just because you can blog in one click doesn’t mean you should…’, his talk covers seven main themes:

1. Authenticity: Don’t make your people take the 5th Amendment
2. Blogs are conversations — so converse!
3. Learn to react: but who will (be allowed to) be proactive?
4. Viral success cannot be planned
5. Don’t patronise or miss your readers’ point
6. Don’t plagiarise
7. Don’t do a me-too

There’s a wealth of examples and links to illustrate each point, and a set of slides so you can give the talk yourself if you’re caught unprepared! (You might want to skip over point six in that case ;))

Jackie — who I don’t know — was verbally and physically attacked during a tube journey and posted about it, together with a picture of her attacker, on her blog. She asked that anyone who could identify the person in the photo contact the police.

Let’s step back in time six months. The ‘How Not To Steal a Sidekick’ blog was simply hilarious. (Blogger’s attempt to track down and shame thief with the aid of photos uploaded to the phone’s website, unbeknown to the thief. Blogosphere goes to Defcon 5). I don’t recall any complaints about it. In fact, I think all of us agreed it was genius.

What exactly is the difference, except that this is a more serious crime? No-one’s talking about retribution against the attacker, simply to contact the police if you know who he is, so they can investigate the matter further.

However, it made me think, and I’d like to register my copyright on the BlogWidow PC for Online Journal Fans. My wife thinks I’ve already got one, but I reckon I can take things a few steps further.

Features:

1. Integrated noise-cancelling headset for blocking out requests to go out/do housework/get off lazy arse for five minutes.
2. Implants transmit river of news directly into brain cortex, together with small electric shocks.
3. Three screens with ‘auto-cut&paste’ hotkeys for advanced EchoChamber™ functionality.
4. Processor, disks and all that gubbins; but you won’t be using anything but Firefox, so don’t worry about it.

Cost: £199 (+ life)

Blogs are now a near second to newspapers as the most trusted information source: A quarter (24%) of Europeans consider blogs a trusted source of information, still behind newspaper articles (30%), but ahead of television advertising (17%) and email marketing (14%).
High spenders are most trusting of blogs: Of those who spend more than 145€ (£100) online every month, the proportion of people who trust blogs rises to 30%.
France leads European blogging; Britain lags: Across Europe, six out of ten (61%) internet users have heard of blogging, and one in six (17%), have read a blog. France is the most blog-savvy country in Europe, with 90% of respondents familiar with blogs. The British are the least blog-aware, with only 50% having heard the term. In Germany, 55% have heard of blogs, 58% in Italy and 51% in Spain.
Blogs are now driving purchase decisions: More than half (52%) of Europeans polled said that they were more likely to purchase a product if they had read positive comments from private individuals on the internet.
They also block purchases: Nearly 40 million Europeans have not bought something after reading comments posted online.

Reassuring to see that the UK has regained its ‘poor man of Europe’ mantle. I’m sure the last piece of research I saw on this subject suggested that we were pulling ahead. Most upsetting.

The report describes the four groups thus:

The Low Authority Group (3–9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.

The Middle Authority Group (10–99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

This contrasts somewhat with the second group, which enjoys an average age not much older than the first at 260 days and which posts 50% more frequently than the first. There is a clear correlation between posting volume and Technorati authority ranking.

The High Authority Group (100–499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.

The Very High Authority Group (500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)

In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group…

As Amy Gahran points out, the problem here is the word ‘authority’ when what is really being counted is the number of times these blogs are linked to. As she notes, a blog with a tiny audience and very few links might be extraordinarily influential in the niche it covers. Amy suggests that ‘popularity’ might be a better word. I’d go one further and suggest ‘linkability’ is perhaps equally apt. Drew Curtis’ Fark.com is very highly linked-to, but it couldn’t really be described as influential.

My second example was going to be Boing Boing. I’m an enormous fan: hand-carved robots and needlepoint iPod covers crack me up. But is it influential? I’m aware that they have a civil rights and anti-DRM agenda, but since I’m in favour of those things anyway, I couldn’t really say that they had influenced me on those subjects.

But then I started to think about other ways in which the boing boing gang and other A-list blogs have been influential. In part, they have shown me what it is to write a blog, or some of the ways that can be done. The same thing goes for Scoble. He is sometimes mocked for writing about what he had for breakfast and other apparent trivia. But it’s about creating a persona for his blog. He’s likened coming to his blog to coming for dinner at his house. I think that comes very naturally for Scoble but for other bloggers, the creation of a casual, welcoming blogger alter-ego might be a very carefully constructed facade. Personally, it’s not for me. For my own satisfaction, I want to produce posts that resemble articles in some senses. That’s more time-consuming and means that it takes me a long time to do, so it has disadvantages.

So going back to the idea of authority. I think the A-list bloggers have an authority, but it’s not necessarily over how I vote or what I buy. They have authority over what I understand by a blog and what a blogger does. That in turn, will affect the way others blog and the nature of the blogosphere. And that, I guess, is what ‘blogebrity’ means.

Euroblog 2006 has done a survey of PRs to discover their use of blogs (found via Neville Hobson).

This is the upshot on their reasons for blogging (click for big):

Compare this to the reasons given by the general (American) public in the Pew Internet /American life report:

Well, there’s almost no similarity between PRs and normal people whatsoever ;).

Update: the PR survey is a year old with a new one just launched. Oops.

Like Dell and EDS, it has gone for a group blog with a number of authors. Other companies like Sun and Boeing have a senior executive in charge of the official blog, while the third approach, taken by companies like Microsoft and HP, is to have larger numbers of blogs from many product teams. My understanding is that Intel plans to introduce or make public other blogs over time.

As a reader, which is my only expertise in this matter, I tend to prefer single-author blogs. You get a sense of the personality behind the posts, their interests, enthusiasms and tics. There’s a sense in which you feel that you’ve got a relationship with the blogger. Team blogs can give the impression that you’re dealing with an institution rather than with people. From what I understand of blog writing, that’s true from the other side too. If it’s a solo affair, you start to develop a unique voice; you get to know your regulars; you start to work out what people are interested in that you can write about; and you start to really care about catering for your readership.

But Intel is doing a very good job so far, and know what they’re doing. Marty Menard, director for high performance computing, explains that their thinking was to create a convocation, “a group of people formally assembled for a special purpose”. If a single-author blog is analogous to going to dinner at their house, then the Intel blog is more like a seminar.

That’s not to say it’s delivered like a series of lectures. While they’re (rightly) trying to share what they do know, there’s an encouraging degree of humility, fragility and an avowed desire to learn. Marty Menard writes:

The intent of this blog and our writers is to create discussion; we intend to share what we know; and finally learn from others.

Jeff Moriarty, a Program Manager in the Enterprise Collaboration & Engineer group, says:

I’ll be honest, I’m worried about these blogs being able to succeed. I’ve worked on many official IT@Intel briefs and white papers, and the process of authoring these things and taking them through legal, and political review is not for the faint of heart. Everything must be squeaky clean and very precisely aligned. These blogs are a much more open avenue of communication, and do not quite agree with some of the more conservative aspects of Intel’s nature. Some people inside Intel flat out don’t “get blogs”, and like the idea at all. That’s where I smelled a challenge, and I was hooked.

In spite of this, or perhaps in defiance of it, the Intel blog welcomes comments and responds to them, also publishing excerpts from them in the sidebar. They also have a blogroll, and though I’m not on it yet, there are controversialists who are, not just corporate sites.

The big advantage of a group blog is that the quality level of contributions can be higher, as can their volume. Instead of one person racking their brains to come up with something worth saying, you’ve (hopefully) got a queue of people lined up to give their best thoughts. Intel certainly seem to be delivering this with posts on Measuring the Business Value of Information Technology and a series of posts about information overload, together with free downloads.

There are other advantages to a group blog, to do with costs and risks. People can do it as well as their normal work. So far as I can tell, all the contributors to the Intel blog also have day jobs. It also changes the way the company is represented. CEO blogs can be absolutely fascinating and develop a great following, but what happens when the CEO moves on or gets canned? A cult of personality around a charismatic leader is very powerful, but also a tad risky. You can see, for example, the wisdom of HP not using its board members as its blogging face.

Compared to the multiple blogs idea, too, there’s also less risk on legal and political levels. Everything published can be quite carefully monitored. That’s something that will be pretty high on Intel’s agenda, unless it has changed a great deal over the last couple of years — perhaps Jeff Moriarty was testing the limits of that with his words.

The One Day in History project from the National Trust is encouraging as many people as possible in the UK to contribute diary entries to form a mass snapshot of the population.

At first I thought this was a terrible idea. Even if it serves to popularise blogging, surely the diary format encourages the most mundane, mediocre, self-absorbed twaddle. What could be more boring than ten-line diary entries made by strangers?

Then I thought, wait a minute. Give this a chance. Have a look and see what the people’s mass creativity can come up with. And this is history in the making, right? Ordinary people’s thoughts, feelings and actions electronically immortalised.

Shouldn’t have bothered. It’s dog plop.

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