How to set up a science blog

Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016

How to set up a science blog

Khalil A. Cassimally

If you’ve decided to start a blog, there are several ways to get started and options that are available to you. Khalil A. Cassimally, community coordinator at The Conversation UK, goes step by step through the basics.

When I started blogging around ten years ago, a blog, to many people, was the evolution of the leather-bound diary. Instead of chronicling the day by writing in pen on paper pages that no one would read, bloggers typed into an Internet browser window and clicked “publish.” I did this too.

Now it’s popular to blog about more than your life. The universe and everything are also frequent blog fodder, and setting up a blog is simple, rapid, and free. To create a blog, you merely have to choose a blogging service, come up with a good name, and have some ideas or views you want to share.

There are a number of blogging services to choose from. At the time of this book’s publication, two of the most popular are Blogger.com and WordPress.com. Blogger was created in 1999 and WordPress in 2003; both provide users with all the basic blogging tools necessary to write and publish.

Blogger is owned by Google, so if you live in the Google online ecosystem (which you do if you use Gmail, Google Drive, Chrome, and/or Android), you may find it advantageous to host your blog there. You’ll find yourself instantly at ease with Google’s familiar clean and minimalist style. Blogger also allows you to change easily the appearance of your blog.1 There are multiple templates to choose from, and the possibility of fiddling with attributes such as color and layout. You can even add Google services for your readers such as translating your posts with Google Translate, emailing your work to others via Gmail, and adding a “+1 button” to track reader interest. Blogger also comes with a built-in statistics page. This allows you to see how many people are looking at your blog generally and at specific blog posts, and shows you what other sites have led them to yours.

While Blogger is a simple, reliable blogging service, it may seem a little limiting to those who want to have more control over their blog’s look and capabilities. For example, you might want readers to be able to access your posts based on when they were published. Or you may prefer to have links to some of your best posts. You can easily choose between these options and more with WordPress. Don’t forget that you can also add multiple pages to your blog—think of an “about” page, a “contact” page, a “portfolio” page—to turn your blog into a proper website.

In addition to offering near complete control of your blog’s look, WordPress has a decent spam filter (which, trust me, is a wonderful defense against a barrage of Viagra ads). It also has good built-in social media integration, allowing readers to share your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and numerous other networks.

One hugely important benefit of WordPress is that it makes it easy to back up and send posts to other websites.2 This allows WordPress to serve as what’s known as a “content management service,” or CMS, used to run entire websites.3 Websites such as Scientific American, Quartz, and Re/code operate entirely on WordPress, so you can imagine the flexibility that it provides. This is something to consider if you intend to spin off your blog into a mini-media empire. Considering the myriad of possibilities provided by WordPress, it is perhaps inevitable that it is not as user-friendly as Blogger, but the added benefits are considerable.

Founded in 2007, Tumblr.com is one of the few successful social networks built around blogging. Tumblr is worth considering especially if you intend to post graphics with minimal text. As opposed to Blogger and WordPress, where each blog post is essentially a webpage, a post on Tumblr is a shareable entity that will travel around among Tumblr users. The uniqueness of the Tumblr experience started with a focus on the “share” button. Users can also follow you and get your updates the next time they log in. Because the emphasis on sharing is so obvious on this service, shorter, snappier, and media-full posts tend to receive more attention because they are quicker to consume and therefore shared more frequently.

In 2012 Ev Williams, the man who started Blogger and Twitter, created another blog outlet, Medium. I think writing on Medium is a beautiful experience. The blog editor is refreshingly simple, with the focus very clearly on your words and photos. It uses a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Like Tumblr, Medium is very network focused. You can add a post on Medium to a “collection,” which includes posts written by other Medium users based on a certain topic. Users can follow collections, which help them discover your work. Your page on Medium shows just a few links to your Medium posts (for an example, see my page at Medium.com/@NotScientific). This emphasizes Medium’s focus on individual posts rather than an individual blogger.

To set up a blog on any of these services, you first need to create an account. The process is as simple as creating a profile on social media networks. Generally social media networks require a username, password, and a name for your blog. Your chosen username can help brand and identify you, and thus you should think about how you want to present yourself to the world. Do you want to tie your blog or social media to your real name? Or do you want a pseudonym in order to separate your writing from your personal life or other professional career?

Your blog’s name is also worth some careful consideration. It is one of the first things that a new reader will see, and first impressions are important. All visitors have the ability to leave and never come back or never to come in the first place. When I discuss blog names with potential bloggers, I always ask them to choose one that has a connection with the themes they will explore on their blog. Once you think you have an adequate name, make sure you Google it to verify that no one else had your same eureka moment.

With your blog created and named, you are free to take over the world. You just need to find readers. My first few blog posts had zero comments: a disheartening experience shared by most new bloggers. Then, slowly, some of my blog posts began getting one or two comments. And gradually, ten or more comments. To find and retain readers, you need to tap into the particular communities of bloggers and readers who will find your blog posts especially interesting. This does not happen overnight.

Start with the content

First, always strive to publish quality blog posts. Writing quality posts is time-consuming and draining, but stick to it. Publishing a blog post that you are proud of is rewarding and chances are that readers will enjoy it too.

Try to blog regularly. No one likes a blog that has not been updated in months. What if you run out of ideas? I have found that talking to friends, lab partners, or my parents has helped me to clarify ideas for posts and spark my enthusiasm. Another great way to keep myself blogging regularly even when I am not particularly full of ideas is to send out a lot of short (just three- to four-hundred-word) “quick-fire” commentary blog posts that capture my thoughts about a particular article or blog post that I had read recently.

When I write longer blog posts, though, I find it a good idea to jot down the structure of the posts before I start writing. I typically summarize each paragraph into one sentence and think about the link between the paragraphs. This helps to ensure that I don’t get stuck halfway through the piece, not knowing how to proceed. I’m also a big fan of Hemingway’s “dictum to end each day’s writing in the middle of a passage, or even a sentence,” as science writer David Dobbs eloquently put it.4 When I start writing the following day, I then know what I’m going to write, so very rapidly get in “the zone.”

Once you get in the habit of blogging, you will find it easier to keep going. The creativity floodgates of your mind are open and ideas for future posts will randomly but frequently pop up. Keep a note of those ideas so that you can explore them later on. Your developing audience will also motivate you to write with their constructive comments and indicators of approval, such as Facebook likes, Google +1s, and Twitter retweets.

Again, make sure you read other science blogs that cover themes similar to your own blog as well as those which you simply find interesting. In addition to a web search, you might try exploring the science blog repository ScienceSeeker (http://scienceseeker.org/index). Reading other science blogs allows you to learn from other bloggers who have been at it for a long time. Study their techniques and let them inspire your own unique writing.

Index and share

The next step is to get your blog out there. Shout! The biggest difference between a diary and a blog is that a blog resides in an open web. But this poses a problem: how do readers find your blog among the millions of others?

There are a number of ways to get your blog out there. Start by submitting it to search engines such as Google and Bing.5 These search engines will index your blog and display links to it in people’s search results. Having your blog appear on search results is one thing but having it appear among the top results will bring more people to your content. For this reason, it is a good idea to think about what’s called search engine optimization (SEO), or the use of writing and coding techniques or strategies to lift a blog to a higher rank when people search for it.6 A web search will bring up many articles about SEO, but Google itself offers some guidelines.7

You should also add your science blog to a blog repository. If you blog about peer-reviewed research, ScienceSeeker allows you to mark those specific blog posts with a few lines of code (which merely involves copying a few lines and pasting them into your blog post) that it will then identify in order to list your blog post among other such “research blog posts.” In essence, ScienceSeeker gives you the opportunity to have your blog posts listed with those of others, including more experienced bloggers, and to be linked into the science blogging community.

Join the community

A few years after I began blogging, social networks started garnering attention. Many of my friends were on a social network called hi5, which was like a stripped-down version of today’s Facebook. After much reluctance, I caved in and created a hi5 account, which I used to rant about football, friends, and my teenage life. All in all, it was nothing that would be of much interest to anyone . . . except friends. My friends began to read my posts religiously, and conversations about our lives and experiences sparkled. I was engaging with a very real, albeit small, community.

I began writing about science around then and a few years later I joined a budding network of bloggers. The network already had a good, established community, and my science contributions tapped into it. By periodically sharing links to my science posts on my hi5 account, I slowly broadened my community, which led to more readers and more discussions.

The science blogosphere is close-knit. If you contribute good blog posts and comments, you will likely get more attention. So it is essential to engage. The main approach is through social media (Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks) and, of course, through blogging. Your aim should be to get your name out there. If people know you, they will click on your links.

A good way to find strong science bloggers is to visit science blogging networks (you might try first http://blogs.scientificamerican.com, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com, http://wired.com/category/science-blogs, and http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com). Read the blogs that interest you and interact with bloggers on social media and in the comments. Expand your network.

Blog comment sections in particular are great places to interact. Take the time to compose well-structured and opinionated comments. If you feel that a comment is not enough to get your message across, write your response on your own blog and share a link in the comments for others to follow. Not surprisingly, comment threads are a great place to discover new bloggers. It stands to reason that if someone wrote a thoughtful comment, that person’s blog might be worth reading as well.

In addition to interacting with other bloggers and sharing their posts, you should of course share your own content. For example, you may consider creating dedicated social media pages for your blog, for example on Twitter and Facebook. As you engage with people, they will start to notice you and follow you back. They may also begin to retweet your tweets to their followers or help to promote your work. Slowly, you will build your own base of followers who will click on the links you tweet.

The key to attracting more people to your blog is to make sure that visitors see that you have a unique voice and offer them great posts. Science blogging is sharing what you are passionate about with others, giving them the same buzz you get when you read about space, Darwin, or panda sex. It is about sharing knowledge . . . while hopefully getting some recognition. That’s cool, too.

Khalil A. Cassimally is the community coordinator of The Conversation UK and has blogged regularly for Scientific American, Nature, and others. Previously he worked on science blogging networks for Nature Publishing Group.

Khalil is based in Mauritius. You can find him on his Facebook page, facebook.com/notscientific or follow him on Twitter, @notscientific.

Notes

1. “Blogger Template Design,” Google, accessed February 13, 2015, http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch14/ch14_sec245.html.

2. “Moving a Blog,” WordPress, accessed February 13, 2015, http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog.

3. “Showcase,” WordPress, accessed February, 13, 2015, https://wordpress.org/showcase.

4. Bobbie Johnson, “David Dobbs: ’Exquisite Wisdom Can Be Hard to Follow,’” Medium, June 20, 2013, https://medium.com/@bobbie/david-dobbs-exquisite-wisdom-can-be-hard-to-follow-1a7f0644ce92.

5. “Website Owner,” Google, accessed February 13, 2015, http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/website-owner/; “Submit Your Site to Bing,” Bing, accessed February 13, 2015, http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url.

6. “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide,” Google, accessed February 13, 2015, https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf.

7. “Do You Need an SEO?,” Google, accessed February 13, 2015, http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291.