The aim of live blogging is to give quick albeit informal information of their interest to users as accurately as possible. Many bloggers set up live blogs in order to offer real time coverage, moving away from the formal and lengthy blog postings.

Flipside of live blogs

At times, fatigue creeps in on stories that don’t have a defined timescale. During developments like the Arab Spring uprisings, live blogs can get stretched and become almost endless, as a previous blog points out. No doubt, it’s a potent form of communication that has changed contours and context of information exchange across the world, cutting across boundaries and reader classes. It demands the author just get on with narrating what’s just happened.

Keep the following useful tips in mind when you opt for live blogging:

• It’s always a wise idea to make use of a separate blog – underneath a sub-domain (or upon a new domain). This won’t cause any confusion among your readers. This also avoids flooding your readers (who subscribe via SMS, RSS or email) with snippets that may overwhelm them. Making use of a separate blog will also help a blog owner to break free from the need of creating formal posts.
• For those not keen to establish another blog (whether under a new domain or a subdomain), can make a blog live under their current post. WordPress users can utilize a plugin known as Live Blogging. It turns a single post into a live blogging experience, with the capability to push out quick updates towards Twitter (that can be set up easily within the plugin).
• Bloggers opting for this route should ensure that their post gets prominently featured upon the landing page so that the readers are able to notice it. It is also a good idea to give a brief explanation at the top of the post. This will enlighten your new blog readers. If live blogging upon a single post, ensure that your site is in a position to sustain the traffic flow spikes and also a higher percentage of commenting.

Automatic updates hold the key

Ensure that the blog you’re using is able to automatically display updates to readers without any need for auto refreshing the browser, which can get annoying). Also, ensure that comments get automatically updated, something that third party commenting systems such as Disqus can offer. One of the preferred ways of doing this is by selecting a theme similar to P2 that can make it convenient for the readers to view the latest update, as well as new comments in real time.

Though tools like Twitter and Cover It Live are also excellent for live blogging, one problem are with them is that they either lack permalinks or you may perhaps lack requisite control of the platform, especially if it’s down).