I watched with interest Newsnight’s Wenesday night special on citizen journalism. Since all Iranian professional reporters have been barred from commenting on the country’s recent conflicts, the world has turned to Twitter, YouTube and blogs for updates on the Iranian situation.

It just goes to show that in the age of the Internet, it’s nigh on impossible to completely stifle journalism. Life goes on regardless, and even news sources as well-respected as the BBC are turning to the man on the street — or should that be, the man in front of his computer or speaking on his mobile phone — for their informational fix.

People tuning in to tonight’s BBC News could see pixellated, mobile phone-shot footage taken straight from YouTube in the place of regular crystal clear, polished reportage. It may have been lo-tech, but was it necessarily any worse off for it?

You may say that this new age source of news has the capability to be infinitely more biased than your typical centre-right news channel, and this is undeniably true. But is it any different from Jeremy Clarkson’s newspaper column, or a typical review on last night’s television? Well, only in the medium by which it is transmitted.

The truth is that, from time to time, we want bias. We want gritty, real-life stories from people that have experienced this stuff first hand – content undiluted by the need for neutrality and sanitisation.

Like it or not, the blogger is becoming as much a part of journalism as the newspaper editor, the television researcher and that bloke with the deep voice that reads the news on Five Live.

Spot the deliberate error

The BBC recently launched a new programme which attempts to seek out Britain’s best young orator. Among the issues raised by the series is that of technology (read: the Internet and texting) and its effect on the English language. Whilst some champion tradition and mourn the death of grammar in the country’s youth, I say we should stop being so wary of change.

After all, I’m sure Shakespeare received much criticism for his habit of making words up, and look where we are now — hundreds of words coined by the Great Bard are in widespread use in modern English.

I’m not saying that poor grammar and spelling should be encouraged. How many times have you tried to read a page of text but utterly failed to comprehend the meaning behind it due to the God-awful sea of indecipherable text language? In my view, once too often.

You will always get these — it’s an inevitibility that a medium as open as the Internet would be filled with incomprehensible blog posts and utterly unfathomable essays. We should instead look at the good parts associated with such a medium, namely kids getting into writing as a medium whereas before they would just sit in front of Chucklevision or something.

The point I am trying to make is thus: find your own style and stick to it. Proofread your work, but don’t send yourself absolutely batty with endless revisions of the same old posts. If grammar is not your strong point, don’t sweat it: as long as you are understood and can get your point across, that’s all that matters. Perfect Oxford English is, for most of us, an unachievable fantasy.

EntreCard is a great way of improving traffic flow on your blog by leaving (or ‘dropping’) virtual ‘business cards’ on other participants’ blogs. By doing this, you earn credits which can be exchanged for advertising and promotion for your blog within the EntreCard network.

EntreCard got me 250 visitors in the first three days I used it. So how did I manage it? Here are some tips for effective use of EntreCard.

• Create a banner as the standard text links are largely unappealing. Take the time to construct your own custom banner ad (125 x 125px) to be striking and effectively depict your blog’s theme. Remember, this will represent your blog within the whole EntreCard network.
• Place your own EntreCard quite high up on your page. People surfing quickly will be able to swiftly drop their card and it makes your blog more appealing to potential advertisers.
• Download the Entrecard Toolbar for Firefox. With a fast computer, you can scroll through 300 blogs in around 1 and a half hours. The favourites feature also makes creating a droplist much easier.

Method

• Begin with blogs in your inbox, then move onto your droplist (favourites). These represent your core followers.
• Next, go through the newest blogs (All categories) as they are likely to have new, active droppers
• Then, scroll through the most popular blogs in your category, and finally the most popular in similar categories/all categories.

Purchasing ads

• As you build up credits, you will be able to advertise on the more popular blogs. Place an emphasis on blogs in your own category and advertise on both cheap and expensive blogs 50%-50%
• Alternatively, you can save up your credits to exchange them for real cash. See here for more details.
  

A theme by StyleShout and Dan Farrimond

Styleshout have some excellent Blogger themes at their website. One in particular that caught my eye was one named Underground. However I wasn’t too sure about the colour scheme – its grey and red industrial theme seemed a bit generic for my liking. So, I spent an afternoon modifying it to a white-on-black theme to use on one of my blogs.

• Download the Underground Black theme for Blogger (Right click > Save As)
  

How to install:

1. Download the theme from the link above.
2. Open up your blog’s control panel in Blogger.
3. Go to ‘layout’ and choose the ‘HTML’ tab.
4. Where prompted, select the file to upload from your hard drive. (You may need to delete some widgets in order for this to work.)
5. Modify as appropriate using the HTML editor. Create your own 600 x 60px banner and upload it using the layout editor.

And that’s it! Enjoy.

Don’t be a sloppy blogger. You can be as haphazard as you like behind the scenes, but where the post is concerned you want to come across as professional and, above all, understandable. I know it’s tedious, but revise your post a couple of times and proofread everything a little while after you’ve written it so you’re coming back to the content ‘cold’.

• Revisit old blog posts and see if you can word them better. Update them by removing dead links, fixing spelling errors and things that have changed since you first wrote the post.
• Spend a bit of time choosing a theme you like and stick with it until such time that necessity says you change. For example, you may decide to add Google Ads and extra widgets, meaning your existing theme is not really any longer adequate to house them all effectively.
• If you feel so inclined, constantly revise and customise your template (XML, HTML, CSS) to your own tastes. Personally, I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to this – I’m not happy until my blog looks right. Just remember, though, that the posts are the most important thing and the theme should be chosen around this.
• Once in a while, really go to town on something. Some might say you should do this in every post you make, but in reality it’s extremely difficult. Once a month, really research something and attempt to cram as much interesting information in there as possible. Use these as your reference posts, the pinnacle of your blogging talents. Mention them to friends and online buddies who’ll see your post and say “wow, that’s really good,” hopefully dropping one or two comments and bookmarking your site before they leave.
• Garnering attention is important, but you want to be careful not to overdo things. Promote your blog in moderation and limit your posts to one per forum – usually that will do, but the odd bump is not out of the question.