The tireless Shelby Meyerhoff of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has just posted “Best Practices for UU Blogging.” Shelby contacted a dozen Unitarian Universalist bloggers, and asked them what they considered to be best blogging practices. She summarized the responses, put them in a PDF file, and now they’re online.
There’s lots to argue about in this report. Since the UUA Web site isn’t set up for discussion, you won’t be able to argue there. So argue here. And to start things off, here’s something from the report:
By 2012, it is projected that 80% of Internet bandwidth usage will be for online video. Unitarian Universalists are way behind the curve when it comes to online video…. I suspect that the audience for text-based blogs is mostly middle-aged and older folks these days.
Feel free to argue about this statement, or anything else from the report, in the comments section….
Several awesome people I know have amazing video blogs that I never have time to watch.
Written blogs will always be faster and easier to both read and write.
And you don’t have to wear makeup.
CC
First of all bandwidth usage is a terrible way to compare the 2 mediums. A streaming video is going to consume far more bandwidth than a text based message of the same size. The text blog could get 10 times the traffic and still consume less bandwidth. So that projection is misleading in the first place.
Second as far as I know there is no magic process to create a transcript of your video log to make it easy for search engines to index. If you are lucky your video will go viral, but more likely anyone stumbling upon it will do so from judicious use of tagging which is far less useful.
If there is a compelling reason to create video content I think it will exist independent of text blogs, I don’t think it will necessarily be an evolution for all content to move in this direction. I don’t have headphones at work and the more some sites move to video for their content the more I find other sources of information. Don’t rush to create video content for the sake of having video content, but if particular messages are better communicated in that medium by all means use it.
UUpdater- Those are excellent points that made total sense as soon as I read them, but hadn’t occurred to me as I was writing my own response. Excellent post.
I’d second (or third) the notion that many people read blogs at work (at least that seems to be when people read my blog according to my stats), and that having the opportunity to read in silence and not listen to audio seems appealing. I’d love to learn more about vlogging in the future as a way to augment content though.
There’s something about human nature that responds to “Why is it changing?” with “But the old way ruled!”
It’s changing, folks. That doesn’t have to mean better or worse. It just means different. (Says the guy who decided two weeks ago that it was time to move away from the popular medium of the 19th century.
When my boss starts sending me video emails, I will believe that this change is actually going to happen and happily concede that I was a stick in the mud.
I actually was really interested in machinma blogging for awhile and put together a few test posts in “The Movies.” They were truly awesome, but they took hours to make a point I could write in a paragraph in maybe fifteen minutes.
I suspect that audio and video blogging will always be about what audio versions of books are, a nice alternate medium if that’s what you’re into and you have the time, but with built-in inconveniences that make it so they never become the preferred way of experiencing the information.
Nobody ever went broke assuming that given the choice, people were going to do the easy, convenient thing that they could do on company time.
CC
So, Jeff W does 15 posts a week?? not comments but posts?
I note I only read half of the blogs mentioned (and hadnt heard of 1/4 of them)
I feel sure that vlogging in the wave of the future – and there is some fairly good stuff on Youtube – but I suspect you’ll have to do a lot of fancy editing to keep folks from turning off in a few seconds…
and of course, I have enough trouble with my current electonics than to go out and buy more electronics for blogging….
Ps. If I were going to guess where blogging is going next, I wouldn’t be looking at video-blogging, which has been out for like five years and never truly caught on, I would be looking at Twitter, which has only even existed for about a year and is an absolute sensation.
It dovetails with both facebook and blogs, you can do it from a cellphone and it connects people with their friends.
And yes, it’s easy, convenient and your boss is never the wiser.
I second everything that has been said here . . . although i don’t think we should count out videos altogether. I think they are great for certain things, and if we are interested in using social media as some sort of uu-vangelical tool, then I think that videos have their place. As in, if I am a prospective member and I want to know what UUs are really like before I sneak in the back of a service, I’d rather watch a video of them talking about their faith/what-have-yu than only reading their blog. For for day-to-day information exchange, however, I think blogs will continue to be prominent, because you can’t just skim a video, or skip to the next section when you get bored.
And as for Twitter, I’m not exactly sure what role that will have in the future for UU . . . I personally use it now to get updates about what is going on in my community (which helps to create a sense of community among my Tweeples, most of whom I’ve never met in person) and what is going on in the UU world (mostly in the form of interesting weblinks). I’m not sure how this will figure into the future of UU, but I’m planning on staying tuned.
My apologies to all for the quick and glib comment upstream.
Chalicechick, I worship you now, for you are ahead of me in machinima, but I can point you to something there that’s very cool, if you haven’t seen it already: moviestorm. I did a short post about them here (and will still hook up anyone with the 300 free points who wants it). Basically, their EULA is infinitely superior to The Movie’s, and I like their business model (basic package free).
But everyone who points to the convenience of simply writing a message is simply right. Text won’t disappear.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t need to do more exploration of other media. Yes, bad vlogs are like bad home movies, but good ones are great. I have a theory that people are less likely to take offense at something said on a vlog than on a blog–words alone are so impersonal, and so easy to misinterpret.
Lindsay, I’m sure it’ll become easier and easier to skim video online.
I’ve got to figure out the Twitter thing, but I confess, I don’t get it. It just seems like ADD blogging to me. Still, the best work by prophets and poets is often short, so I will study it.
@Chalicechick. Unless your boss *encourages* you to Twitter.
Yeah, I don’t see audio or video blogging being the next big things, despite claims for years that this is so. (Still photo blogging has legs though; see Flickr.) It costs too much in time and money, and I think blogging is all about finding the right audience with a small message.
I do think online audio and video (not necessarily in blogs) have roles where the effort inputs replace a more difficult project, like a training event. Or perhaps where the ambiguities of text get in the way, like satire.
Shrug. It basically IS ADD blogging. But it strikes me as the direction things are going because while v-logging is something that established bloggers sometimes try, LOTS of non-bloggers Twitter. I find it an interesting challenge and sometimes see if I can get the essence of a post into a single 140 character tweet.
My best work so far as been “Chalicechick is delighted to have a chubby clay robot on her desk at work. Pseudo-Godparents are simple creatures, and easily pleased. ”
I would be interested in the machinma program. I think it’s a cool medium for certain kinds of messages.
At the same time, my favorite thing about blogging is getting comments, and I suspect that video comments are never going to happen.
CC
who, again, doesn’t want to have to put on makeup to blog.
One other somewhat related thing . . . last week, I e-mailed the Young Adult wing of the UUA to ask if they knew of any congregations that were doing a particularly good job of using social media to attract young adults. They said they did not, other than to send a link of a video some congregations in California used. Then, just a few days later, the webpage with all of the blogging info came out. It seems to me that this would have been a good thing to let me know about when I asked about social media . . . so do you think this happened as a result of lack of communication at UUA? Or because they didn’t see blogging as relevant to my question? And if this is the case, what does that say about our online efforts?
Hey, Dan, don’t think it would be forthright to point out that you’re quoting your own contribution to the report?
UUpdater @ 2 — All your points are well taken. Sites like Seesmic may be finding some compelling reason for video content.
Ms. Theologian @ 4 — Learn more about video blogging from “Secrets of Videoblogging.” Which my sister, the professor of writing and composition, would gleefully point out is a book. A dead-tree book to learn about videos, heh heh heh.
chalicechick @ 6 You write: “Nobody ever went broke assuming that given the choice, people were going to do the easy, convenient thing that they could do on company time.” Very good point. I need to keep that in mind.
StevenR @ 7 — You write: “So, Jeff W does 15 posts a week?? not comments but posts?” I know, it’s unbelievable.
chalicechick @ 8 — [nodding in agreement] Especially if Twitter can get beyond their technical problems.
will shetterly @ 10 — You write: “I’ve got to figure out the Twitter thing, but I confess, I don’t get it. It just seems like ADD blogging to me.” Sounds to me like you have figured it out.
Scott Wells @ 11 — You write: “I think blogging is all about finding the right audience with a small message.” Which goes back to UUpdater’s point: video content is not searchable. And the main way we find the right audience with our small messages is still via search engines like Google.
Lindsay @ 13 — Except for a few very savvy staffers and a few savvy volunteers, the UUA has generally been pretty clueless about the power of social media and new media. The only blog written by a UUA staffer is Philocrites, and he has to write it on his own time. Or take the Web sites of the two candidates for UUA president: I looked at them when they first went up, and they were clunky, boring, didn’t have the info I was looking for — and of course they didn’t allow any interaction with readers, making it appear to me that these candidates will be all about top-down control, while having little interest in listening to ordinary UUs. I know, I know, they’re both really good people, blah blah blah, but that’s what they communicated with their sites.
Philocrites @ 14 — [busted]
Dan, thanks for pointing me to Seesmic! It excites me much more than Twitter. (I don’t IM, so I may have missed the intermediary step for twitting.)
Since everyone needs to encourage the UUA to move deeper into the 21st century, may I say that I found it sadly amusing that the report about blogging is a PDF on a site that doesn’t have comments?
I hope I didn’t give the impression that I didn’t think video logging would take off, I’m sure it will. I just find most “which will prevail” comparisons of disparate technologies rather misguided. When my parents were in the Philippines 12 time zones away e-mail was the best form of communication, when they are rolling down the road at 50+ miles per hour I use the cell phone to get a status update on their location, and when I want them to be able to see my daughters antics while we talk we vChat. It’s not a matter of which technology will win, it’s great to be able to use them all.
@Will – the reason folks usually point out the old technology rules is that they wind up sticking around for purposes that the new technologies don’t really replace. Faxes can be used for a quick transmission of a legally binding signature, unlike e-mail images. This significance seems to keep the technology from fading away completely.
In particular I’d love it if the local zookeepers did a vlog about the animals, latest additions, newborns, etc. Something to get the kids even more excited about making a trip.
I think some forms of blogging will decrease. I am not a big fan of micro blogging – twitter seems a better format for that. I’d much rather read a thoughtful analysis of a movie than a bunch of posts along the lines of “just got tickets — just saw the trailers — etc.” I think blogging will go through a necessary evolution where some blogs die off and others trim down.
Not sure of a really good idea for a UU video log. I am trying to think of something that measures progress, where visual impact is important. Maybe if there was a vLog to document the recovery efforts after Katrina or something along those lines?
Some really good points made, already.
It’s been my experience that Twitter serves a similar function as updating one’s Facebook status. While some bloggers I know have automated their blogs to include their twitter posts, they’re still not really blog posts. They’re usually a recording of events, or a quite comment about something (like the DNC, recently). Blogs tend to be a much more in-depth explanation of one topic. I think we will continue to see both mediums used, but in different ways.
Likewise, video and text-based blogs, as everyone else has pointed out, have very different purposes and appeal to different kinds of internet users. I’m not convinced it breaks down by age, persay, as I know a ton of young adult bloggers, but I do think that videos have a wider audience that usually consists of fewer “Internet dorks” and might therefore be a more effective platform for marketing and outreach.
It’s been my experience that a lot of fellow UUs are bloggers but may not necessarily be blogging about UUism. If there was a more direct outlet, with more advertisement are a critical mass of participators, that might be able to be harnessed more effectively. FUUSE got irritating very quickly and never really did it for me – it was crowded too much by a few select blowhards that gradually everyone I was interested in being there for dropped off. Perhaps some kind of community weblog with effective moderation (something like http://www.metafilter.com, for example) specifically for UUs might be more effective.
Good discussion.
Hey Heather @ 19, good to hear from you!
I never thought about it before, but I think you’re right that Twitter and Facebook are very similar. I started out with Twitter, which I like pretty well, then got a Facebook page, which I never use because it’s too much like Twitter. I suppose I should put my Twitter feed on my Facebook page or something. Actually, I probably want something in between the two of them.
Interesting to hear about FUUSE — that was just my experience with some of the old UU email lists I used to subscribe to — even though they were moderated, the moderation wasn’t very effective, and I just stopped reading them. I like your idea of some kind of community weblog — don’t know how it would work, but I like the idea….