Bad Blogging Ideas: Dump an Entire Document on a Web Page with little editing or comment
I didn’t expect to come across two bad blogging ideas in one day, but this is a corker - and it is political.
Christina McKelvie SNP Candidate for Hamilton South has cut and pasted a huge document to her blog. The unformatted documented contains approximately 5,900 words, is posted with minimal commentary from Christina, and has clearly not been edited at all.
The original page is here (600k). I have archived a local copy here (600k).
Who - in the whole world - is going to read that? A more pointed question is who will bother to return to a blog that does this?
I note the following points:
- Christina McKelvie’s page looks as if someone who hasn’t got a clue (half an hour with Word would sort out the formatting) has simply dumped a whole document into their web page from a text editor. There are line breaks in the middle of paragraphs, page numbers everywhere, and even tables listed sequentially column by column down the page. Poor.
- The copy of the page I have downloaded weighs 600k - that is a 2 minute download over a dial-up link.
- In Scotland, internet penetration in 2005 (pdf 300k) was just under half of the population (page 2). Almost a third of those - 14% of the population were still on dial-up access (also page 2).
Not a good way:
- To convince your electorate that you take them seriously.
- To encourage people to read your blog.
- To put over a professional appearance.
A good way:
- To show that you don’t really care about your readers.
- To lose votes.
- To invite derision from other bloggers.
- To gain negative PR.
For the record, bloggers (or good bloggers):
- Treat their audience with consideration.
- Summarise material and link to it.
- Add value to material that they quote, since blogs are about opinions.
A blog is usually a reflection of the personality of the blogger. In this case, that makes me wonder.
I hope, for Christina and the SNP’s sake, that this is a one-off.
By the way, if anyone would like to read the document you can find it formatted legibly on the “Scotching the Myths” website.
Tags: Scottish National Party, SNP, Christina McKelvie, Scotching the Myths, bad blogging practice, bad blogging ideas, Hamilton South, internet politics, political blogging
[tags]Scottish National Party, SNP, Christina McKelvie, Scotching the Myths, bad blogging practice, bad blogging ideas, Hamilton South, internet politics, political blogging[/tags]
Hi,
I wanted to just add the link but got the entire doc. Blogging is new to me so we learn by experience………… so there will not be any more large docs dumped on the blog. Cheers for you helpful comments.
[...] Wardman is frustrated by candidates with blogs simply dumping documents on the page, and provides some helpful pointers for any potential party-political blogger. Speaking personally, [...]
[...] I wanted to highlight that Christina McKelvie, SNP Candidate for Hamilton South, has followed up my article about her blog. [...]