Re: Classification of Mil-blogs

Milblogging.com's one-of-a-kind index of military-themed blogs categorizes content by each U.S. branch of military service, as well as the labels of spouse, parent, reporter, supporter, and veteran.

With an eye toward generating a constructive conversation about how to inspire others to document and share their military experiences online, perhaps it might be useful to consider by content, rather than by author's experience, uniform, or vocation. This isn't intended to replace or redefine Milblogging.com's labels, but to offer a different way to look at blogs and other forms of online communication.

As an additional benefit, this exercise might encourage would-be communicators to consider forms and formats outside of "traditional" blogs, including: social media outlets such as Facebook pages, microblogging tools such as Twitter, or visual-media channels such as Flickr or YouTube.

Recently brainstormed with other bloggers and Facebook friends, here's a list of types of military-themed content that writers and artists might explore through online media:

• spiritual / inspirational

• family / spouse

• parent

• memorial

• first-person narrative

• support-the-troops project or organization

• veterans organization

• healthcare advice / experience

• financial advice / experience

• education / employment advice / experience

• political activism / advocacy (To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy: If you start a sentence with phrases such as "Congress should ..." or "You should vote for ...", you may already be an activist.)

• news aggregator

• news analysis

• war-story / oral history aggregator

• policy analysis / military strategy and tactics analysis

• humor / satire / cartoon

• historical (unit or family) / genealogical

• official military unit, office, school, or branch of service

• Stolen Valor watchdog

• combat multipliers / enablers / capacity-builders (Examples: U.S. Department of State; U.S. Department of Agriculture; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civilians and contractors; private contractors, Non-Governmental Organization workers.)

What are we missing? What other suggestions do you have?

Mil-blogging Tips and Tactics, Part II

This is second part of a two-part series on suggested Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (T.T.P.) for writers of military-themed blogs. For Part I, click here.

Make blogging a habit. Put yourself and your readers on a schedule, and stick to it. Keep writing. Even when you don't feel particularly inspired. Bonus tip: Before you publish a blog publicly, write it privately for at least 30 days. That gives you time to get into a rhythm, find a voice, and experiment with different visual designs and add-ons/widgets.

Some people even decide to keep their blogs accessible only to friends and family. A mil-blog doesn't have to be public.

Before every trigger-pull ... breathe. Use an off-line editor such as MarsEdit. Set your blog-posts to publish at a specific time, hours or days after they're written. That gives you some time to discover typos, or to think of better ways to say what you mean. Sherpatude No. 18 ("Your trigger finger is your safety ...") applies to the "send"/"publish" key as well.

Put social media in its place. Establish a Facebook page for your blog. Connect your blog to Facebook via an application such as Networked Blogs. The application will automatically re-post blog entries to Facebook. Given evolving readership trends, you may find you have more readers and comments on Facebook than you do on the blog itself. "Write once, publish many."

That said, remember that social media only feels like work. It's not actually producing anything. The blog's the thing, not making snarky comments or posting funny pictures. Set a timer for yourself, then get back to the blog.

Don't pay for your blog-hosting service. I use Google's Blogger, also known as Blogspot. Other friends use Word Press. Both are free.

Do pay for your own domain/URL. Some governmental computer networks automatically block web-addresses that include words such as "blogspot" and "wordpress." You can't blog to the military masses if your site is blocked on governmental computers. You can buy a domain for something like $5 to $25 annually.

Give someone else the keys, just in case. If you're going downrange, the unthinkable can and does happen. Plan for injuries and outages. Give someone back home log-in/password access to your blog, in case it needs to be shut down, permanently or temporarily. Besides, given the way the Internet interconnects via some parts of the world, you might also have to use this person to unlock your accounts. The blog-service police tend to regard multiple log-ins from Afghanistan, Germany, and India on any given day as an attack, rather than as a poor blogger downrange attempting to administer his/her blog comments.

Recognize that experiences vary. Just because the Army is one way for you, doesn't mean that it's that way for everyone in the Army. Times change, procedures evolve, situations are fluid. Every experience, including your own, is "Army of One, sample of one." Anecdotes do not equal analysis. Feelings aren't facts. See also Sherpatude No. 3: "Never speak with complete authority regarding that which you lack direct knowledge, observation, and/or suppressive fires."

Words matter, but pictures help. A photo or other illustration will increase the number of readers to a given post. Beware of copyright infringements, however. Always use your own photography, or images that are shared via a collective commons license.

Register your blog. Register and claim your blog at Milblogging.com. It's a good way for new readers to find and follow you, as well as to find and follow other bloggers.

Keep it short. For optimal readability, most blog-posts should be no more than approximately 500 words in length. If you've gone on too long on a given post, consider breaking it into parts.

Finally, don't worry about summation. When a given post feels finished, end it.

Mil-blogging Tips and Tactics, Part I

As mentioned in a previous Red Bull Rising blog-post, a couple of readers asked for Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (T.T.P.) on "How to Write a Mil-blog."

With the usual "lessons-learned"-style caveats about my being both an Army of One and a Sample of One, what follows is a quick run toward some helpful hints. More caveats: Your results may vary. Void where prohibited. Take what you need, leave the rest.

Here goes, in no particular order:

Choose your own adventurous identity."On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." As a journalist, I've been trained to avoid citing anonymous sources and to view the use of pseudonyms suspiciously. That said, I realize that loved ones—especially kids—don't always like to appear in print. There's also the question of your co-workers and fellow soldiers: Regardless of whether you live in on a FOB or in a foxhole, you also have to train, fight, win, sleep, and eat with the guys and gals next to you.

Because of all that, for purposes of safety and sanity, you may wish to mask people's identities. You may also wish to mask your own, because Uncle Sam is occasionally a little bi-polar when it comes to blogging. The same guy who made you a lean, mean killing machine is also the one who issued you a Reflective Safety Belt.

Personally, I started writing under a pseudonym because, while preparing to deploy in 2009, I was confused and confounded by Army rules and regulations regarding use of social media. Keep in mind, IT WAS PART OF MY ARMY JOB to advise my command and fellow staffers regarding uses/risks of social media. I was an internal communicator (and blogger) by day, and a mil-blogger by night. Although that sounds a little like a mission brief that starts off with "Assault Team Fox will secure Objective Henhouse,"creating the "Sherpa" allowed me to established a bright line between on-duty and after-duty.

With all my various identities and log-ins, by the way, my buddy Archer started calling me a "4th Level Sock Puppet."

So, I'm a fan of pseudonyms. Years after the fact, the "Sherpa" persona continues to be useful. Sherpa is neither a commissioned nor warrant nor enlisted soldier. Who he is depends on where he is and who you are. Sherpa is neither trigger-puller, Fobbit, nor stay-at-home Jody. Sherpa can play stupid when necessary, and be a smart@$$ when he wants to. The real guy wearing the mask can't always do that.

Besides, Sherpa and I know different people. We tend to lead separate lives.

State the mission. Before you even write your first blog-post, write an approximately 25-word statement describing the purpose and scope of your blog. Complete this sentence: "The purpose of this blog is to ..." Don't worry: Nothing is written in stone on the Internet, and you can always change it later. Don't know where to start? Read on ...

Triangulate your position. Name three of your life's passions. Write them on piece of paper. You can even draw circles around them, like a Venn diagram. Look where they intersect. That's your target. Start your writing there. (Example: When I started Red Bull Rising, I knew I was passionate about my family, citizen-soldiers, and the 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division.)

As long as any given post connects to some or all of your three passions, you'll keep a tight topical shot-group.

Never write anything you wouldn't say to someone face-to-face. I learned a variation of this in journalism school: "Never write anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of The New York Times." Either way, it distills to this: Never write anything you wouldn't want to explain or defend. That goes for e-mail messages, news articles, love letters, Facebook hacks, and blog posts.

Pick your fights wisely. The old summer-camp-and-dorm-room rule applies: Never talk religion or politics, they just stand in the way of a good time or mutual understanding. You have your opinions. Let other people have theirs. Let's talk about what matters, mil-bloggers. Let's talk about the troops.

Be open to all. Blogging is a journey, not a destination. You meet a lot of people along the way. Take wisdom and advice, wherever you find it. That grandmother in Kentucky knows more than you do about bloggers and blogging, as well as what's happening overseas. So does that Army doctor's wife, who turns out to be a freelance writer who shares an interest in educating youth about writing. So does that mischievous Medieval Sheila who sends pink musk-sticks in care packages to our troops downrange.

Personal note: I would not be the blogger I am today without a lot of help from Kentucky Woman, Kanani Fong, Mari Paxford, Jeff Courter, Ben Tupper, David Stanford at Doonesbury's "The Sandbox," Tom Ricks, Carl Prine, and Doctrine Man!!

Remember Sherpatude No. 24.

*****

One of my next pointers is to keep blog-posts short. And, when you can't do that, to cut them into parts. That leads me to this statement:

To be continued in the next Red Bull Rising blog-post ...