For a more active news-style blog, consider that training events make good journalistic fodder. But even the best concept for a blog post will go flat without the right preparation.
With that in mind, five tips for blogging about training events include – find events that people specifically care about, always bring the appropriate equipment to the location, be sure to understand the scope of the story as a whole, know that great photos will often make the difference between a good story and a marginal one, and create follow-up stories for additional traffic to your blog.
Find Events that People Care About
Sometimes training events are mostly designed for the people being trained. For instance, a seminar where people learn about computer troubleshooting techniques. But what about something like going to a dog training event? People automatically care about the stories behind the dogs, and the stories behind the trainers. These training events are the ones that have the human interest involved, and they’re the ones that you should focus on blogging about to achieve maximum bang for your blogging buck.
Bring the Appropriate Equipment
Depending on what you plan on capturing at the training event in question, be sure you’re prepared with the right equipment. If you want good photos and video, then bringing a DSLR is a good idea. If you’re more interested in writing your blog and then posting it immediately, you are probably good with a tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard. Don’t bring more than you need to have either, as bogging yourself down with equipment is just going to get in the way of your overall flexibility.
Understand the Scope of the Story
If you come to a training event without a general plan in mind, your blog post is going to suffer. If you at least have the skeleton of what you’re going to be presenting in mind, then it’s difficult to come away with something bad. Therefore, the easiest way to approach an event is with an understanding of the scope of the story you’re going to tell, and just fill in the details.
Great Photos Make the Difference
Great photos make the difference in human interest stories. But even after you take them at the event itself, if you learn to process photos in a way that makes them even more compelling, then you’ll be setting yourself even further from the pack in terms of high quality output.
Create Follow Up Stories for Additional Traffic
After your first blog post about a particular training event, don’t be afraid to add to it later. Get some deeper details from the event coordinators, post the updates, and link back to the original article.
