Blogging about your research

If you want to work on your visibility inside and outside academia, starting a blog proves to be the most accessible medium. You decide what you write and when you publish it. Within your own boundaries you can experiment with form and content. Blogging also can be a means of improving your ideas and writing skills. It will also help you to increase your network.

During this training you learn how to write a blog post, but also how you start a blog in a way that contributes to your development as an academic. The first session follows the path from strategy to setup of a first blog post. We start with the blogging strategy. What are your goals? Who do you write for and what niche in the blogosphere do you want to claim? You learn to think up good topics to write about and how you structure a blog post. After this session you write your first blog post as a homework assignment. The trainer will give you feedback on this first draft.

The second session start with an evaluation of the writing experience. You will comment on the second draft of each other’s posts. Then we discuss how to find a good main photo that will attract the attention of your readers in the Twitter timeline. You will also learn how to enrich your blogpost by including videos, images, and links and how you structure the blog using tags and categories. We also discuss different blogging platforms, such as LinkedIn and WordPress, the name of your blog and the corporate identity. We also deal with findability via Google (SEO) and distribution via social media.

Teaching methods

This training consists of theory, instruction, group discussion, exercises, and a home work exercise. You practice by working on your own blog and first post. You will receive a lot of personal feedback and tips by the trainer.

Practical

Trainer: Hermen Visser | Language: English or Dutch | Duration: two sessions of four hours, four hours home work | Maximum number of participants: 8 | Participation: this is an in-company training | PhD students of Leiden University and LUMC can follow this training as part of the PhD training programme.

Looking for a broad introduction into the world of social and conventional media? Take a look at Academic outreach.

Tailor-made

This training is a proven concept. However, we can adjust form and contents to the needs of our clients. Think about a training for a group of bloggers that also focusses on the division of labour and roles.

What our customers say

During this training I not only learned a lot, but also got a lot of things done. I developed a blogging strategy, was inspired by reading other blogs, and wrote my first blog post. Hermen spots the problem immediately and recognizes why a text does not flow. By asking the right questions, he helped me to improve my text. What I was not able to do on my own in one year, Hermen fixed in an afternoon. I can recommend the training to anyone who wants to start blogging!

Meike de Boer, Universiteit Leiden

Trainer

Hermen Visser

Hermen Visser (1985) studied Biology at Leiden University. Already during his studies he developed a passion for science communication and took his first steps as a trainer. He taught students in layout skills and the graphic software Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. Since his graduation in 2011 he works as a freelance science journalist and trainer. He was radio and web editor at the editorial offices of the Dutch broadcasting agencies. VPRO and NTR. Currently he writes as a freelancer for VPRO Gids and Trouw.