Tag Archives: blogging

Blogging style and etiquette

By Jonathan Calder | Sat 31st October 2009 - 8:50 am

Young woman, blogging by windowWelcome to part four of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Jonathan Calder with a set of essential writing tips.

Blogging is a very personal thing that we do in public. And there …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Mark Pack | Fri 30th October 2009 - 12:50 pm

Six blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

  • Chris White – good to see another councillor using ALDC’s excellent MyCouncillor system.
  • Giles Wilkes – a think tank blogger spawns his own blog, which is an interesting take on the question of why there are so few successful think tank blogs. His explanation? “‘Institutional’ blogs look and feel terrible.  You need individual personality.”
  • Jeremy Rowe – do not look at the photograph on this post if you are easily scared.
  • John Ault – the man who triumphed on Top Gear turns to blogging.
  • Nigel Roberts – a

…

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , , , , and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

Watford’s liberal Lib Dem Mayor – what Iain Dale didn’t report

By Stephen Tall | Thu 29th October 2009 - 1:40 pm

Tory blogger Iain Dale should perhaps have paused before clicking ‘publish’ on his latest – highly inaccurate – post, How Very Illiberal of a LibDem Mayor. Those few seconds’ hesitation would have been sufficient for him to do a quick Google and find out what he was about to write was nonsense.

In his article, Iain recycled a Metro report to allege that Watford Borough Council (run by elected Lib Dem mayor Dorothy Thornhill) has “barred from public playgrounds in parks. Instead, they are forced to wait outside the railings whilst council-employed “play facilitators” assist the children.”

Iain describes the …

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Posted in Local government | Also tagged , and | 36 Comments
Mark Thompson

Where to get ideas for blogposts

By Mark Thompson | Sat 24th October 2009 - 9:00 am

Welcome to part three of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Mark Thompson (the one with the blog rather than the one with TV empire) addressing one of the problems that befalls many would be bloggers: how do you keep on coming up with ideas for new posts?

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
Mat Bowles

What’s the best blogging platform for new bloggers?

By Mat Bowles | Sat 17th October 2009 - 7:20 am

Young woman, blogging by windowWelcome to part two of our “Introduction to blogging” guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It’s appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it’s the turn of Mat Bowles, advising on the technical side of getting started with a blog.

So, you’re thinking of starting a blog of your own. You could do what most people seem to do at this stage, and go sign up directly to Google’s Blogger service and just get writing. Personally, I don’t think that’s necessarily the best idea. I’m a Lib Dem, my membership card says on the back:

No one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged , , , , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

What does the future hold for British political blogging?

By Mark Pack | Mon 12th October 2009 - 12:20 pm

Predictions that the next general election will be the one in which the internet will make a huge impact have regularly come and gone. Post-Obama ready yourself for another such clutch of predictions, but underneath this punditry froth the internet has got on with quietly shifting the way politics works. It’s been more at the unglamorous organisational end (imagine trying to organise a campaign without email) than at the eye-catching systems-shattering dramatic end beloved of pundits, but it’s been a major change nonetheless.

Following in the footsteps of email, blogging has also established a firm place in the logistics of politics, even if its impact on the overall style and conduct of politics is less clear and less dramatic. Blogs have become a key news medium for people involved in or significantly interested in politics, they have become a key part of the flow of news to and from journalists and for some MPs and candidates they reach local audiences large enough to be a significant factor in their election efforts.

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

An introduction to political blogging

By Mark Pack | Sat 10th October 2009 - 8:18 pm

Welcome to the first part of a new weekly series on political blogging which we’ll be running here on The Voice between now and Christmas. It’s designed primarily to be an introduction for anyone thinking of starting a political blog, but packed full of enough information to be useful for existing bloggers too.

If the series is a success, we will turn it into a pdf e-book afterwards, putting all the advice together in one convenient document. There will be a chance to revise the posts before collating them, so you’re even more welcome than usual to post comments to the …

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Posted in Blogging guide | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Wikio’s top blogs in the UK: September ’09

By Stephen Tall | Sat 3rd October 2009 - 7:30 pm

Those lovely people at Wikio have emailed The Voice with their list^ of the top blogs in the UK in June 2009.

(Lib Dem blogger Jennie Rigg has already published the list of top 30 politics blogs: below is the full list for all blogs, though there’s considerable overlap between the two owing to the dominance of politics blogs in Wikio’s weightings.)

1 Iain Dale’s Diary (=)
2 Guy Fawkes’ blog (=)
3 Liberal Conspiracy (=)
4 Liberal Democrat Voice (+1)
5 Labourlist (-1)
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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Because homphobia is gay when it’s against Tories, too

By Stephen Tall | Thu 1st October 2009 - 9:00 pm

The Lib Dem blogosphere has a bit of a love-hate relationship with arch Tory blogger Iain Dale.

Some regard him as little more than a self-promoting tribal propagandist who plays a clever game of appearing impartial when it suits him. Others believe him to be a nice fella for a Tory, who spreads round a lot of blogging link-love, and maintains a prolific, usually entertaining blog, which through hard work and determination has brought him mainstream celebrity. My view? As a Lib Dem I think there’s a bit of truth in both verdicts (though, truthfully, I incline more towards the latter).

But …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 26 Comments
Stephen Tall

That Andrew Marr question: wrong, wrong, wrong

By Stephen Tall | Sun 27th September 2009 - 5:15 pm

It’s a few weeks since I was emailed an article by John Ward (also sent to a number of other blog-sites), subsequently published at notbornyesterday.org, alleging the Prime Minister suffers from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, and that these conditions are being treated with prescription pills.

I decided not to publish, or refer at all to the allegations on Lib Dem Voice. As I explained to John in an email at the time, “without named sources for the story it’s not something we could publish on LDV. I appreciate, given the nature of the story, that having sources on the record is difficult, but still.”

The BBC’s Andrew Marr today felt no such compunction, asking Gordon Brown bluntly: “A lot of people in this country use prescription painkillers and pills to help them get through. Are you one of them?” To which the Prime Minister would have been quite entitled to reply – though of course he couldn’t, as Mr Marr would have known – “None of your damned business.”

There are two issues here. First, was the BBC right to pose the question (and I’m sure the line of questioning was cleared at a high level within the Corporation)? And, secondly, should it matter to us what the Prime Minister’s reply was?

Was the BBC right? Absolutely not.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 37 Comments
Stephen Tall

The state of the Liberal Democrat blogosphere

By Stephen Tall | Fri 18th September 2009 - 2:45 pm

There is of course no such thing as ‘the Lib Dem blogosphere’. For sure there are hundreds of Lib Dems who write blogs, but any suggestion we can be neatly bundled together into one coherent entity is wide of the mark – we’d scarcely be liberals otherwise. Which is why if you visit the Lib Dem Blogs Aggregator – a site which collates the feeds of more than 220 active bloggers – you will find posts about potholes and proportional representation, pop-culture and Palestine, all nestling alongside each other. If anything defines ‘the Lib Dem blogosphere’ it is this eclecticism.

We can separate political blogs – whether Lib Dem, Labour or Tory – into two broad categories. First, there those bloggers who write primarily for (and are read primarily by) those already interested in politics. And then there are those bloggers – usually political campaigners – who are primarily writing for readers in their electoral patch.

In each case it’s true to say the Lib Dems punch well above our weight. You don’t have to take my word for it.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Nick Clegg’s The Liberal Moment: your blogosphere reader

By Stephen Tall | Thu 17th September 2009 - 9:55 am

Today saw the publication of Nick Clegg’s Demos pamphlet, The Liberal Moment, outlining his thoughts on progressive politics over the past century, moving forward to the future.

The party’s media office made the trusting (and canny) move to give a group of Lib Dem bloggers advance sight of the document, which means there’s already been a vigorous response around the blogosphere. In chronological order, here are the posts to date (we’ll add others as they appear):

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

Revealed: the three blogs Lib Dem MPs respect

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th September 2009 - 8:40 pm

Iain Dale has the results of a ComRes survey of 151 MPs (undertaken back in April-May this year) to find out which journalists and which bloggers they most respect. Here are the findings:

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Posted in News and Online politics | Also tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Stephen Tall

Top 75 Lib Dem blogs: the Total Politics List

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st September 2009 - 9:00 am

It’s six weeks since Total Politics asked blog-readers to vote for their Top 10 favourite blogs in their annual survey promoted here on LDV, as well as at LabourList and Iain Dale’s Diary. More than 1,500 people voted, and here is the full list of the Top 75 Lib Dem blogs in the Total Politics list:

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , and | 29 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem MPs targeted by Nazi spoof websites

By Stephen Tall | Fri 28th August 2009 - 11:30 am

Powys’s County Times has noted the sudden spate of spoof websites linking some 90 Lib Dem MPs and candidates to the Nazis:

Every Lib Dem MP in the UK has fallen foul of one political blogger, who goes under the tag ‘Illiberal Democrat’, and has created a series of blogs which appear to link the party to Naziism. Both Powys MP’s are Liberal Democrats, and both have their own page filled with anti-liberal propaganda and Swastikas.

Roger Williams MP, Brecon and Radnorshire, was quick to condemn the blogs: “I think it’s rather pathetic and rather purile for someone to soil our

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Lessons from the Republican internet catch-up efforts

By Mark Pack | Sat 22nd August 2009 - 1:06 pm

The way the Repubicans are trying to get to grips with improving their internet presence following last year’s Presidental election defeat suggest some interesting pointers for the UK. As I’ve often written in the past, US politics is very different from British politics – and so one should be cautious at reading across lessons from one country to another. Nonetheless, the Republicans efforts to catch-up do highlight what they feel are the most important areas.

Yesterday’s CNN report on the topic highlights two facets to this: the importance of Twitter and the degree to which a successful internet presence relies on senior figures being willing to move away from traditional modes of communication.

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Posted in LDVUSA and Online politics | Also tagged | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Are Tory bloggers less trustworthy than Labour or Lib Dem ones?

By Mark Pack | Fri 7th August 2009 - 9:56 pm

Rather bizarrely, that looks to be the view of the Conservative Party’s Press Office. At the tail end of July, their attitude towards bloggers caught some attention following the refusal of a Conservative press officer to even email an already published letter to a Conservative blogger.

PR Week this week reports that the Conservatives have now changed tack somewhat:

The party has adapted its blogger relations policy after a staffer caused a storm in the Tory blogosphere by admitting the party’s press office does not consider blogs ‘important’…

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged and | 24 Comments
Stephen Tall

48 hours left to vote in the Total Politics top blogs poll

By Stephen Tall | Wed 29th July 2009 - 10:00 pm
Click here to vote in the Total Politics Best Blogs Poll 2009

Yes, that’s right folks, you have until midnight this Friday to cast your votes in the Total Politics poll of Top 10 favourite blogs. This year, the poll is being co-promoted by Lib Dem Voice, LabourList and Iain Dale’s Diary.

For full details and rules, please see our previous LDV posting. Then email your Top Ten Favourite Blogs to [email protected]

Posted in Site news | Also tagged , and | Leave a comment
Stephen Tall

LDV weekend meme: what is the state of the Lib Dem blogosphere?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th July 2009 - 4:30 pm

When Iain Dale asked if Lib Dem Voice would this year co-sponsor Total Politics’ Best Blog Poll 2009, he also set me some homework: to write c.1,000 words on ‘the State of the LibDem blogosphere’ by the end of the month? As you will see from the date, my deadline is fast approaching.

I’ve got a few ideas of what I intend to write, but I’d greatly appreciate the insistence of Lib Dem Voice readers – as well as Lib Dem bloggers – to ensure my analysis is suitably rounded and informed. I’ve come up with five questions I …

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Posted in LDV meme | Also tagged , and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Total Politics Best Blog Poll 2009: vote now!

By Stephen Tall | Thu 16th July 2009 - 3:00 pm

It’s that time of year again, when Total Politics asks blog-readers to vote for your Top 10 favourite blogs. This year the poll is being co-promoted/sponsored by Lib Dem Voice in conjunction with LabourList and Iain Dale’s Diary.

Click here to vote in the Total Politics Best Blogs Poll 2009

The rules are simple.

1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will …

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Posted in Best of the blogs | Also tagged , and | 11 Comments
Alex Foster

Top RSS tips for local campaigners

By Alex Foster | Fri 10th July 2009 - 11:14 am

The attentive amongst you will have spotted amongst the 30 tips from m’colleague Mark Park for aspirant politicians:

Subscribe to at least 20 sites using an RSS reader, 10 of which are not party political. Using an RSS (feed) reader is a huge time-saver and an effective way of keeping up with news and information. But there’s no point just being an expert on party politics if you want to be an elected official.

RSS readers are many and various – my favoured one is Google Reader – and having just returned from engaging in another of Mark’s tips, a week …

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Posted in Local government and Online politics | Also tagged , , , , and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Transparency is for Lib Dems, too

By Stephen Tall | Tue 23rd June 2009 - 9:30 pm

The casual reader of this post – Duff-Verhofstadt drive to federal Europe sees its first Liberal casualty – over at The Yorkshire Guidon blog might not understand its full implication:

Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, in the running to lead the Liberals and Democrats group (ALDE) in the European Parliament, and his campaign manager UK Lib Dem MEP Andrew Duff make no secret of their desire to see a ‘federal Europe’. … Such Federalist credentials are impeccable and yet are starting to spook MEPs in the ALDE group. Today saw the first defection as the widely regarded Finnish MEP from

…

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged , and | 7 Comments
Alix Mortimer

Daily View 2×2: 17 June 2009

By Alix Mortimer | Wed 17th June 2009 - 10:55 am

2 big stories

No prizes for guessing it’s Iran above the fold again today. After ruling out a votes recount, the ruling forces had this to say, which is of some interest to anyone who gets their political news online:

Following a crackdown on the foreign press, the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force, warned online media of similar treatment over their coverage of the country’s election crisis.

In its first statement since the crisis broke out, the guards – an elite force answering to the supreme leader – said Iranian websites and bloggers must remove any materials that “create tension”

…

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Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Which party leads online?

By Mark Pack | Sun 24th May 2009 - 11:20 am

Social Media Affairs has just released a report looking at the political social media landscape in the UK (with, ahem, myself being one of the four people contributing introductory remarks about politics and social media).

Any report like this has to deal with all sorts of issues of definition and categorisation but there are some striking broad trends they’ve found.

Liberal Democrat councillors are the keenest bloggers

7% of Liberal Democrat councillors are bloggers (a number boosted significantly by the ALDC MyCouncillor system), compared to 2% of Labour councillors and 1% of Conservative councillors.

This keenness to blog also has a significant …

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Posted in Online politics | 26 Comments
Stephen Tall

Mark Reckons on BBC Radio 4’s ‘More or Less’

By Stephen Tall | Thu 21st May 2009 - 8:20 pm

What does it take for a Lib Dem blogger to hit the mainstream media?

You might think racy exclusives and sex scandals would be the way forward. But not Mark Thompson of the Mark Reckons blog – instead he’s chosen to make his mark on the Lib Dem blogging world through the medium of statistical correlation analysis, examining the likelihood of MPs in safe seats being implicated in the expenses furore.

His study, MPs Expenses and safe seats correlation – update, was picked up by (among others) The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee. And now Mark is to be …

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Posted in News and Online politics | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Paul Staines: not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy

By Stephen Tall | Sat 18th April 2009 - 1:56 pm

A week ago, Damian McBride was still the Prime Minister’s chief media advisor, and LabourList’s Derek Draper was attempting to laugh off as blokeish banter the emails which implicated Number 10 in smears against senior Tories. But, then, we know what they say about a week in politics.

Paul Staines, sole author of the Guido Fawkes’ blog, has had a good week, given ample, respectable print space to repeat a central point he’s been making for years: that those political journalists who are part of the ‘lobby’ system have failed democracy:

Though the fourth estate may not have a formal

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , and | 11 Comments
Matt Wood

Opinion: ‘Dirty tricks’ politics is destroying British democracy

By Matt Wood | Sun 12th April 2009 - 7:15 pm

Politics should be about constructive debate and people working together to find solutions to common problems like global warming, the economy, social cohesion and public health. Most people get involved in politics for the right reasons, primarily because they want to change the world or help their local community.

However, if you read the Sunday newspapers, it would appear that all politicians do these days is fiddle their expenses and think of new ways to smear their opponents. The resignation of Damian McBride following his alleged plans to smear to Tories, is just the latest in a long line of …

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Posted in Op-eds | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Eric Pickles’ QT cock-up – the eerie silence of the right-wing blogs

By Stephen Tall | Fri 27th March 2009 - 1:40 pm

I blogged earlier today on LDV about Eric Pickles’ pitifully embarrassing performance on last night’s Question Time, the Tory chairman riling the audience with his tone-deaf defence of MPs’ second homes. It’s not just in Lib Dem circles that this attracted attention – it’s provided much water-cooler comment in the office, and PoliticsHome.com has uploaded the transcript and video here.

You might have though it would have merited some coverage in the right-wing blogosphere, whether springing to the Tory party chairman’s aid, or brushing it aside as a momentary gaffe. I’ve checked a couple of times today on …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Are you throwing away readers by posting at the wrong time?

By Mark Pack | Thu 19th February 2009 - 12:25 pm

I’ve got a guest post over on Daily Blog Tips this week:

You have lovingly crafted a blog post, containing pearls of wisdom which you are sure will enthral, entertain and enlighten the world. You have taken on board advice from experts on how to craft a good headline, you’ve found a great graphic to illustrate it, you’ve remembered to polish the text with search-engine optimised language, and so you hit publish, right? Wrong.

You can read the full post here.

Previous posts on LDV with blogging tips and advice

…

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Posted in Online politics | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Canonical URLs: improving your website’s performance in search engines

By Mark Pack | Sun 15th February 2009 - 7:48 am

A rather more technical post than usual, but if you are used to playing around with HTML tags or fiddling with the innards of systems such as WordPress, this post has some good news that could make your website perform better in search engines…

The multiple URLs problem

It is quite common for a page on a website to be accessible via more than one web address. For example:

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/new-government-bailout-is-blank-cheque-131421437;show

and

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/new-government-bailout-is-blank-cheque-131421437 (i.e. without ;show at the end)

both link to the same page.

There are two reasons this might be a problem. First, a search engine may fail to realise that these are the same page and so search results get clogged up with duplicates. Second, some people may link to one version of the URL and other people to the other. Splitting links between these two versions can mean the page performs less well in search engines than if all the links were to just the one.

Search engines are pretty good at trying to deal with this sort of problem, but they aren’t perfect.

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Posted in Online politics | Also tagged , , and | 8 Comments
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