Reflecting on my Niche Blog

I set quite ambitious targets for my niche blog – and got about half way there. I think that I was successful journalistically, but came up short in terms of engaging with and supporting a community.

The Journalism

10 of 15 blog posts tackled subjects surrounding employment that are ongoing issues and also had a topical news hook. I tried to offer both analysis and explanation on subjects such as public sector pensions and the idea of a wage for interns. I did intensive research on each, learnt a great deal about the subjects, and went into real detail. I have always been scrupulous in linking to, and acknowledging, source material and media stories I have used. But I think that my posts were text-heavy and I blogged on the back of government or think-tank proposals too often – and these are audience turn-offs.

I have used material gathered for the broadcast element of the course in several posts, airing unused or longer interview audio. I think I did this best in the post about strikes at JobCentre Plus call centres. The interview provided me with an exclusive update on the story, and I wrote in a news pyramid style, briefly, with SEO and embedded audio.

Finally, I went out and interviewed solely for the blog a couple of times. My coverage of the Right to Work protests in Cardiff city centre was the most effective use of multi-media, combining my own photographs, embedded audio and a Google map.

The Community

My posts haven’t been read by huge numbers of people, both because I think that my subject matter certainly didn’t fall into the easy-reading category, and because I didn’t work with a community well enough. I aimed to tie my Twitter account with my niche blog closely, and think I did this effectively. Employment is my patch on the broadcast course and I have tweeted links to employment-related stories, particularly in South Wales, trying to build up an idea of my Twitter account as a source of jobs news.

Facebook has been more important in referring readers to the blog though, and I think asking questions which hope to entice readers to click on the link (“Do employers have too many responsibilities towards their workers? Or will the government’s new proposals see employees being exploited?”) worked well. I didn’t set up a Facebook group around the blog, as planned, and also failed to comment on the blogs I had identified as core to my niche. The biggest number of hits I had on a post was 33, although I’m struggling to identify why this was, as I didn’t trail it hard on Twitter or Facebook. Perhaps it’s because Boris Johnson was tagged!

Looking forward, although I have enjoyed writing about employment, some thought needs to be given to how to make a blog like mine more readable and build a community. A more targeted awareness of what I am aiming to do – which is mainly (as I set out in the first blog post) to provide good observations and explanation of topical issues concerning employment in a time when it is a prevalent subject – would be a start. I then need to work on engaging with an audience of people likely to spend time reading and commenting on posts, by engaging with their own blogs.

The Course Blog

I hugely enjoyed the course blog, which was a great opportunity to think aloud about some interesting journalistic subjects. I tried to take something on from the online lecture, rather than just type it back, often arguing my own point, and using personal touches to make it more readable. I wrote several other pieces away from the lectures, including on the future of ITV online, which was the post which got the most hits. The course blog was also a platform to post on my progress towards the Capturing Cardiff project as I went along.

Supporting blog posts

Course blog:
The Customer Knows Best

Niche blog:
Union sets ultimatum – or more public sector strikes
CIPD suggests minimum wage for interns