Business Information Systems

We’re not doing too great with our regular course work, partly because of the combination of bank holidays and sickness…but we’ll get there. Your student projects on the other hand are coming along really nicely. I am dying to see how they’ll look like in a couple of months. But for now, we need to take another look at the organising basics:

The illustration shows six different, important dimensions of your blog. How much you emphasise each (or more than one) of them decides which message your blog will send – and it allows you to stir your readers’ expectations.

6 dimensions of blog organisation

Examples:

• Many categories suggest a blog on many different things – since posts represent the most dynamic dimension of our blog, the reader assumes that something is going on here. Few posts only with one post per category is a little stupid.
• Many pages suggest that the blog author(s) may be working from a “book metaphor” – this very blog (few entries, many pages) is an example for that – it’s less of a blog and more of a course portal with links and pages. A sort of electronic brochure. Ideally, your blog is dynamical and not book-like.
• No tags make it very hard for readers to search and get an overview of the richness of your information. Use tags, use them freely (but accurately).
• No links suggest that your blog is a universe without exit. That’s a waste given the information out there unless yours is a blog everybody links to because you’re such a genius. (You may well be but give yourself some time to show it.)
• You need stats! For all student projects, you must have a Google Analytics (GA) account and plugin (check here for a former IBMan student project – a learning module – with lots of information on Google Analytics). On your dashboard, a simpler plugin like “ShortStats” is also useful, but GA is hard to beat. There are popular alternatives (like sitemeter).

Hey this really isn’t rocket science as you can see – mixed with the willingness to experiment and some design instincts, your projects are going to be just great! Your individual blogs already rock!