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In order for us to keep our sites relevant with current trends, you are required to keep a blog on current news and events, as related to our each individual web site themes. The internet is full of news sources from around the world on every subject imaginable. One of the most reliable news sources is Google News, which also operates a useful service for news bloggers, updates by email known as 'Alerts'.
You must have a Google account for this. Log in to 'My Account' on Google and search for 'Alerts'.
You will be given a particular web site blog you must keep up to date. You will be given a range of keywords and themes for that blog. The alerts you set up will be based on the keywords you select. For example, you may be given the subject 'buy to let' for your blog. You would then set up a Google alert to email you every time there is a news story, blog or press release containing the phrase 'buy to let' anywhere on the Google network.
When an alert arrives it will contain a few lines of info and a link to its source. It is important to note you will not use every alert you receive. You must choose only the very few that will make a good blog entry for us, from the many you receive. Do not spend too much time on deciding. We only want the best ones, and so if it takes you more than 30 seconds to decide if a blog is worthwhile, delete the alert. If you are not sure, delete the alert. You are only expected to create a blog of this type once or twice a week. So do not spend more than a few seconds deciding. On some subjects you might get 10 alerts per day, 70 a week, and we only need one or two. If in doubt, delete it. There will be another alert along very soon.
If you do decide to create a blog entry from the alert, click the link and wait for the next alert. Have a quick read of the page, a very quick read, and if its not the best, click off and do the next one. If it is good, copy the text of the news story to your computer and start editing. You may find it useful to copy the text in to Notepad and then to Word, as this will remove any web page formatting that will get in the way of your editing.
The blog must now be re-written to make it unique. Only choose the most relevant parts. We only need around 200 words, including any quotes that must be left unedited. Most of the news stories will have many more words than this, so be choosy about the just the best info. Every sentence must be changed around so that it is different from the one you are copying. You may decide to combine several points in to one, it is up to you.
Quotes must be left unchanged however, and also correctly cited, such as:
According to Simon Robinson, littledetails.co.uk mastermind and all around good guy, "These are my exact words and I like 'em that way. I mean this way. Doh."
Even if the quote contains bad English, it is an attributable quote and must be shown as it was written.
For every blog entry you add you must link it to a relevant page that contains similar info on one of our current sites. Go to the sitemap page in each case to search the list of pages. You must add a link in the middle of your blog, using some keyword relevant anchor text you pick out, to the page you select. Please ensure the correct anchor text is displayed on the page and not just the URL. Please ensure you test each link to ensure it points to the page it was supposed to. This way we build strength on each of the pages you link to from the blog.
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