Making My Blog More Relevant

November 22, 2007 5:43 PM

My blog is getting some significant attention and I'd like to make it more useful. How do I do so?

My blog (in profile) is about a particularly niche-y subject - alternative education and youth, particularly in Malaysia. I was recently nominated for a high-profile youth award because of that blog, so myself and my blog have received some significant attention from the public. Some of the issues I have brought up on my blog are also (finally!) being considered by the Government and other people with considerable power.

I would like to build on this attention and make my blog more useful and relevant than it is now. I am looking not just at web content, but also related offline content and activities. What could I do?

Some ideas I have:

* A book (a few people have suggested this)
* Syndicated news articles
* Workshops / roadshows
* Education fairs
* Youth fund/scholarship
* Sponsorship with a bookstore to sponsor books for review

as you can see, they're rather long-term, so some things for the short/mid term would be good too. Also, due to my nomination, I've scored free web hosting for a year, so anything web-related would be great too.

Thanks!

posted by divabat to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Generally speaking, teachers' tend to have worse computer skills than their students. How about an effort to improve or put focus on this?

I also like the idea of an Alternative Education Conference. No doubt it would be a huge undertaking, but with the right mix of seminars, work shops and companies selling their products and services, it could have a huge impact.

You could always set up a charity fund that each year donates money to a specific charity. Write about the charity before AND after the donation to make people's donations more personal and why not do a follow up with the people whose life the charity has changed.

Good luck!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:13 PM on November 22, 2007

A question and a suggestion.

Question - what are these areas on which you're focusing? In other words, what problem(s) are you primarily addressing?

Suggestion that may or may not be relevant - you could match up older student "mentors" with younger students. They could correspond with and help each other. You'd have to work out particulars to make it relevant, manage expectations of both parties, etc., but it's something you could start doing relatively soon, I'd think.
posted by amtho at 6:16 PM on November 22, 2007

One thing you could do is install some discussion forum software (I've been looking at Vanilla) and start developing a permanent community around the issues that are important to you and the readers of your blog. If you find strong voices that resonate with your own priorities, you could look at inviting them to join you in a group blog.

An on-line community of people who share your passion will also provide a source of collaborators for investigating and pursing some of the other good ideas you identify.
posted by Good Brain at 6:20 PM on November 22, 2007

If you go the podcast/webcast route please consider accessibility issues and provide a transcript.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 7:02 PM on November 24, 2007