Barking with the Big Dogs

Here's an exercise that can support discussion about the likely users of your blog and your blog's reach.

1) Reflect on your blog's key themes. You may want to refer to your creative brief and even take the opportunity to refine it. Try to think in both the specific and the general (i.e. Environmental Issues vs. Water Pollution in Philadelphia). Agree on a few key themes as a group.

2) Assign a theme to each group member (or work in pairs). Challenge your interns to identify the three most popular websites on these themes. Of these, have them identify the one that is most closely related to what your group has been or wants to be blogging about. Make sure they justify their selection.

3) Give them about 15 - 20 minutes to explore the website. It does not have to be a blog. Have the students open up a word document in google docs in order to take notes on what they find. Use the opportunity to mention the dangers of plagiarism in the online environment of cut and paste.

4) Challenge them to generate a blog post which introduces their readers to this website. Require that they not only briefly describe the site, but also evaluate and respond to the site. What is notable or valuable about this resource? Who is the intended audience? What information is left out? Is the site a reliable source of information on the topic?

5) If the website is a blog or allows feedback, have the interns leave a comment.

6) Introduce students to the "blog list" or "link list" gadget, which can be found by going to "Layout" and clicking on "Add a Gadget." (This is how I added the list of our intern blogs that you see on the side bar of this blog.) Have interns add the website they found to this list.

7) Discuss how the act of linking to and posting on the websites of the "big dogs" may help drive traffic to their blog.

The "how to drive traffic to your blog" articles I've read always include a point or two about leaving comments on other people's blogs.