ORNurseLink Community Manager Blog

What is a Blog?
A blog -- a contraction of web log -- is an online journal that is updated frequently by an individual with regular entries (also called posts) of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as pictures or links to other websites.

This page that you're reading right now is a blog post.

Most blogs are personal in tone (like popular mommy-blog Dooce), but many companies and organizations use blogs to informally communicate with customers and members in a timely manner. Both Dell and Delta Airlines have popular corporate blogs.

Some blogs are about only one topic or theme. For example, Auto Blog covers the car industry.

How Should I Use My Blog?
On OR Nurse Link, each member of the community is allowed to create one blog.

Your blog can be whatever you want it to be. It's a place to collect and share things that you find interesting — whether it's your commentary on professional issues, a Congress diary, or a log of interesting nursing news.

(Please keep in mind that OR Nurse Link prohibits the posting of commercial information, jobs, or advertising, unless authorized.)

Blogs generally center around a particular theme, so if you decide you would like to create your own blog, think of a title and description that will encompass the content and information you'll be sharing in individual posts.

For example, a good blog title and description would be: Ginger's Nursing News Blog, Commentary on nursing current events and news.

After you've created your blog, you can write your first post.

A blog is composed of individual posts, and you can create as many posts as you'd like on your blog.

Blog posts can be just a few sentences, or they can be as long as a magazine article (like this one you're reading).

Posts are listed chronologically, with the most recent information at the top so your visitors can read what's new.

It's important to note that all blogs on OR Nurse Link are public and are wide open for anyone on the internet to read.

Blogs Vs. Discussions Boards
Discussion boards on OR Nurse Link like MemberTalk are generally used to post short questions that you'd like to have answered. They're not really a good place to post long commentary or post personal messages or thoughts.

Blogs are more appropriate for longer form posts and information -- they're like your own personal newspaper column.

If you wanted, for example, to give daily updates about your Mercy Ships experience, you wouldn't do that in a discussion forum, but you'd post them on your blog.

OR Nurse Link blogs are also open to the public, so you can have a readership that reaches beyond AORN members.

Discussion boards on OR Nurse Link are readable only to AORN members who are logged in to OR Nurse Link.

Blogging Resources
There's a lot of advice on the internet about blogging. Just do a Google search for "advice for beginning bloggers" and you'll find a wealth of information.

But briefly here are some quick tips from blogger Chris Brogan:

1. Write to be helpful.
2. Be brief.
3. Tell a story.
4. Connect others, if appropriate.
5. Share. Often.
6. Don’t overthink it. (It’s a blog, not a dissertation.
7. But be thoughtful.
8. Don’t be mean.
9. Publish often enough to build a relationship.
10. But be mindful of your audience’s time.

The best approch to starting your own blog, though, is to just dig in. Blogging is learned best by doing -- you'll pick it up as you go along.