Everyone who attended the Train the Trainers course in August agreed to offer their own free class in turn, and I’m fulfilling my promise to Damien Mulley by holding a Blogging Master Class on 2 December, 2008 in Cork. This is an excellent opportunity to meet other bloggers, learn some new blogging skills, and get your arse kicked by me without having to pay for it like normal clients do.

What’s a Master Class? It’s a term from music education and refers to a particular format for learning:

The difference between a normal class and a master class is typically the setup. In a master class, all the students (and often spectators) watch and listen as the master takes one student at a time. The student usually performs a single piece which they have prepared, and the master will give them advice on how to play it, often including demonstrations, and admonitions of common technical errors. The student is then usually expected to play the piece again, in light of the master’s comments.

And whilst I’m not pimping myself as a blogging master (there is no such thing), that’s broadly what we’ll be doing. Over the course of the afternoon, we’ll take four people’s pre-prepared blog posts in turn, and edit for content, formatting, voice and technical details like images and linking. As with a traditional master class, this will be an actual, hands-on learning experience. Unlike a traditional master class, there will be no cellos, but there will be lots of group participation.

That will take two or three hours, and we’ll wrap up with a mini-workshop on maximising and marketing your blog, because when you put that kind of effort into your posts, God knows you deserve some readers.

The workshop will cover:

• What and when to blog
• Writing compelling content
• Using categories and tags effectively
• Learning from statistics
• Promoting your blog
• Strategic linking
• Cheap and cheerful tools

Although the exercises are always good practice, this course is more geared towards business bloggers than personal bloggers, and preference for hands-on editing will accordingly be given to those blogging in a commercial capacity.

Date: 02 December, 2008
Time: 1 – 5 PM
Venue: Lancaster Lodge, Washington Street, Cork
Cost: Free. Woo hoo! Parking also free
Bring: Laptop, wifi thingie, draft blog post

So if you’d like to come along, please click here to register – I’m happy to do this with a minimum of three people and maximum of twelve, and I promise it will be fun.

And that yes, there will be fag breaks.

Update: There are three eight people signed up already, so this gig is definitely on. Woot!