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Archive for January, 2011
What factors make a blog successful?
Jan 10th
I know, I know - this question is terribly open-ended. There are obviously any number of factors that can contribute to the success of any given blog.
Some blogs may be horribly written and contain largely useless information, but if authored by some celebrity, it will likely become popular regardless.
Also, something as simple as the blog design, is surely going to impact its popularity; we like to look at things that are appealing to the eye. Thus, I predict, all else being equal, the blog with a more visually-appealing interface is going to be more successful.
Blog interactivity - in terms of the degree of discussion that is encouraged, and how easy it might be to share the information on a given blog might also influence popularity.
While I could go on forever making semi-plausible assertions of factors that influence blog success, the reason I am writing this post is because I recently came across (thanks to random Googling) a Master’s thesis published online looking at this very issue.
“The Study of Blog Success Factors and Their Effects on Web Business” is a thesis written by Kuan-ting Lin and defended just under a year ago. More >
If you have time for academic conferences, why don’t you have time for blogging?
Jan 7th
Earlier this week I commented that when scientists discuss the reasons that they don’t blog, it almost always comes down to 2 key concerns:
1. They don’t have the computer skills.
2. They don’t have time.
On Wednesday in my post titled “If you can write an email, you can write a science blog”, I did my best to argue that computer skills are no longer a barrier to science blogging. Today I would like to take on the second, and I think more important argument. But first, an important admission. More >
If you can write an email, you can write a science blog
Jan 5th
I’ve been blogging about my research for a little over 2 years now, and in general the response from my colleagues has been quite positive. People are often quite interested in the use of social media to spread the word about their research or network within their field of study, and some of my grad-student colleagues have even been convinced to start blogs of their own (e.g. here, here and here). And yet, when I speak to more established researchers, even ones just out of grad school, they invariably bring up 2 key objections to blogging:
1. They don’t have the computer skills.
2. They don’t have time.
Today I’m going to tackle the first of these objections, and I’ll come back to objection number 2 later this week. More >
