It is an era of social media and the Internet is bustling with many blogs. Social media sites are full with links to blog posts on every subject under the sun. For any and every topic you find a few blog post out there. The question is whether researchers can cite contents from blogs?   Why citing is important for researchers? The answer to this question is that it is important to cite sources which they use in their research for several reasons; one most important is authenticity of citation and its relevance to the topic. A good source adds quality of the work conducted. The listing of sources is important for the referee and other reader’s information. To be a responsible scholar, he/she needs giving credit to other original work and acknowledge the source.  No researcher, author, academician can take credit for somebody else’s idea.

There is evidence that blog coverage of scholarly articles associates with increased visibility and impact. Unfortunately, there are a number of obstacles that might limit the use of blog posts as an altmetry source (altmetrics are metrics and qualitative data that are complementary to traditional, citation-based metrics). First, only a small percentage of articles are covered in blogs.

Second, the definition of “scholarly blogs” and the decision about which blog data to use is challenging. When relying on certain collective work and networks for blog data we miss the impact of articles covered by blogs outside the data collection range. The coverage problem is not specific to blogs, or even to altmetrics, but it extends to bibliometric (bibliometrics is statistical analysis of written publications, such as books or articles databases) which are also chosen as sources and to indexing.

Third, there is a lack of sustainability, in sense maintaining a certain level. While most peer-reviewed journals enjoy professional archiving and printed copies (with ISSN/ISBN numbers), blogs can close down or move without leaving a trace (except perhaps in archive.org and similar sites). For blog-derived data to be reliable, they need to be properly indexed and archived. Bloggers need to create more authenticity for their blogs.

What are the reasons to Trust Online Blogs? Blogs can provide readers with insider information. This means that many blogs are typically written by experts actually working within specific fields of interest. They are providing their readers with firsthand knowledge that can help guide the decision making process.

Blogs normally are written without restrictions. Industry writers typically have more freedom when choosing the types of blogs they write. They don’t usually have a chain of checks and re-checks before being published like online periodical pieces would have. Because of the nature of blogs, even the most controversial topics are given an outlet for discussion. Plus, blogs are usually informally written, allowing readers to easily relate to the language and message. This is perfect for writers looking to provide informative web content that their target audience can connect with and act on. Blogs are usually niche blog covering a specific area.

Blogs are frequently updated. This means that web sites that feature regular blog posts provide evolving information that remains relevant and useful. Site owners don’t want their readers to be turned off by stagnant sites that rarely change, so they put significant efforts into creating stimulating content that appeals to their audience. By doing so, blog writers provide their readers with up-to-date information that is relevant to what is happening in the world around them at any given time.

If a researcher wants to quote or interpret part of a blog post, he/she needs to create a reference to a particular specific post, although many blogs end up being outlets for personal opinions and ideologies to be shared, the fact remains that blogs also serve as legitimate sources of news and information from industry experts. Online blogs are clearly in great quantity, and the list just keeps growing every day.

The global increase and popularity of social media stimulates interest in the utilization of blogs for research purposes. There is, however, a significant lack of information about the manner and scope of blog used in certain areas of research. The fact that all of the big citation styles for instance APA which uses citation formats which not only cover newspapers and reports and web pages but also blogs. APA Style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences. It is described in the style guide of the American Psychological Association. Therefore, it clearly suggests that researchers and authors CAN USE BLOGS FOR CITATION.

The Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature (GL ’99) in Washington, DC, in October 1999 defined grey literature as follows: “That which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers.” While purposefully searching for sources on a research topic, grey literature helps in providing a more comprehensive picture. It becomes necessary to search for this unpublished information due to publication bias. The meaning of publication bias is there are some studies that have negative or insignificant results and therefore they do not get published.

Conclusion of the topic: Can scholarly blogs be cited in research work? The answer is YES.

The octogenarian Aabid Surti says “If I can, you can.” This great man walks around apartment buildings in Mumbai every Sunday, plumber in tow, fixing leaky taps and pipes by saving every drop of water he can. Abid has written seven plays besides over 80 books, he has hosted 16 exhibitions of his paintings, and created much adored comic characters like Dabbuji, Bahadur and many more. In 1993, this resourceful artist also received a National Award for his short story collection, Teesri Aankh.

Aabid cannot bear wastage of water; he lived his childhood on the pavements in Mumbai. As a child, he saw his mother queuing up at 4 am for a bucket of water. He has seen fights for every drop of water on streets. People on pavements fought for every bucket, and that legacy stayed with him forever. Once, when he went to a friend’s place, he saw one of the taps leaking, and it hurt him a lot. Since then, leaking faucet bothered him so much so that Aabid started his fight to save water and that has not stopped till date. In the first year of the Foundation’s existence, in 2007, he had visited 1666 houses on Mira Road, fixed 414 leaking taps free of charge, and saved about 4.14 lakh litres of water! Thus, with a volunteer and a plumber, Aabid is seen saving water in different places around Mumbai every Sunday.

In 2013, his son wrote a blog about his work, “Saving the Planet one drop at a time”, it was selected to be a part of children’s textbooks for 2014 by Pearson Education. Aabid is humble and does not boast or talk too much about his achievements. He says “basically I am an author and painter, so when I get an idea for a story, I just simply sit down and start writing. When the Drop Dead idea came, it was just an idea for me, not a great idea or this and that which people are talking about. For me it was just an idea. So I called the plumber and I started moving around my neighbourhood.”

Save every drop or drop dead. That is all Aabid Surti has to say to each one of us. The octogenarian author and artist works passionately to save water. His work gives him immense satisfaction; he does not expect anything in return.

Aabid believes that when one honestly sets out to do good work, the entire universe conspires to help him achieve his goal.  God helps in raising funds. Just days after Aabid Surti decided to set up the foundation, he received news that he had won a Hindi literature award which came with the prize money of Rs 1 lakh. Aabid adds that his costs are low. He pays the plumber and the volunteer Rs 500 each. He spends some money on getting publicity material, so the initial one lakh of amount lasted a couple of years for him to carry on his mission. His sincerity is supported by some likeminded people, whenever he falls short of funds; he gets funds from someone voluntarily.  It seems, these days, the plumber and the volunteer refuse to take any money from him because they see his sincere effort and feel for the cause. Aabid is building a splendid human chain that is inspired by him. There are people taking up his example and beginning to help save water in their own cities. All you need is an accompanying plumber to fix the leaking taps in your area.

If we don’t conserve water today, our future generation will have to face the water crisis. Small gestures can make a big difference. Kudos to Aabid Surti!!

A good blog attracts attention of readers. The blogger therefore should create useful content and must be planned well in terms of its design, structure and the content must be well written. The world is connected with social media and I strongly feel therefore, a blog can draw attention to something which needs promotion. It has more significance in terms of attention it draws than a press release. A blog can be very effectual in bridging the gap between a product and the consumers. It all depends the way a blog is handled.

First and foremost, the blog needs a good name. The name must be catchy to attract the viewers. A well-written and illustrated blog can add to a reader’s understanding of a staid topic and, at the same time, it can promote a firm’s marketing messages related to related area. A blog is a reflexive marketing tool; it is accessible to anyone visiting a company’s Web site. The firm must use the e-mail, Face book and Twitter to promote the blog to prospective segment for dispersing the message.  The best blogs in the world are dominated by the technology sector. IBM, Oracle and SAP are superbly made blogs and in India, Infosys, TCS and HCL are the top blogs. The information technology companies have a better and wider scope to gain the best out of the blogs as it’s closely related to their work.

There is a gap between adoption of blogs amid the big companies compared to smaller companies and rest of the world.  It’s certainly not so easy to maintain a blog with timely posts and making them interesting and it is very different than any other corporate communication tool; it’s very different than a press release, a write up in business magazine, advertisements, outdoor publicity etc. Another hindrance is that not all people are internet savvy. But, sooner or later blogging will be the most admired marketing tool because it is very spontaneous. The transition is taking place, though it is slow. Every corporate marketing message is aimed at creating more and more value. I think nothing else can really help in adding more value which blogging offers easily as it derives the search engine benefit. The search engines give priority to websites that have fresh and applicable content. It’s been evident in business world that websites with supporting blogs get more traffic than sites without supporting blogs.

A blog has the magic of standing out in crowd. A firm needs to conquer the style of updating its blog regularly. The content needs to have relevance and it works! May be not immediately, but somewhere in the world somebody is watching, reading your blog. It can reach out to thousands of new customers in nooks and corners of the world giving steady and constant flow of information.

In India ’The Indian Bloggers Directory’ gives the world a gist of blogs maintained by Indian bloggers. It’s an initiative taken by Mr. Amit Agarwal to showcase the best Indian blogs and bloggers from India. India is home to more than a million blogs; hence the initiative of www.indianbloggers.org is really appreciable. The directory is meticulously designed based on topics and authors.

Please do visit http://indianbloggers.org

A good blog requires to be planned well in terms of its design, structure and it must be well written by a person who has mastered the art of writing blogs. The world is connected with social media and I strongly feel therefore, a blog can draw attention to something which needs promotion. It has more significance in terms of attention it draws than a press release. A blog can be very effectual in bridging the gap between a product and the consumers. It all depends the way a blog is handled.

First and foremost, the blog needs a good name. The name must be catchy to attract the viewers. A well-written and illustrated blog can add to a reader’s understanding of a staid topic and, at the same time, it can promote a firm’s marketing messages related to related area. A blog is a reflexive marketing tool; it is accessible to anyone visiting a company’s Web site. The firm must use the e-mail, Facebook and Twitter to promote the blog to prospective segment for dispersing the message.  The best blogs in the world are dominated by the technology sector. IBM, Oracle and SAP are superbly made blogs and in India, Infosys, TCS and HCL are the top blogs. The information technology companies have a better and wider scope to gain the best out of the blogs as it’s closely related to their work.

There is a gap between adoption of blogs amid the big companies compared to smaller companies and rest of the world.  It’s certainly not so easy to maintain a blog with timely posts and making them interesting and it is very different than any other corporate communication tool; it’s very different than a press release, a write up in business magazine, advertisements, outdoor publicity etc. Another hindrance is that not all people are internet savvy. But, sooner or later blogging will be the most admired marketing tool because it is very spontaneous. The transition is taking place, though it is slow. Every corporate marketing message is aimed at creating more and more value. I think nothing else can really help in adding more value which blogging offers easily as it derives the search engine benefit. The search engines give priority to websites that have fresh and applicable content. It’s been evident in business world that websites with supporting blogs get more traffic than sites without supporting blogs.

A blog has the magic of standing out in crowd. A firm needs to conquer the style of updating its blog regularly. The content needs to have relevance and it works! May be not immediately, but somewhere in the world somebody is watching, reading your blog. It can reach out to thousands of new customers in nooks and corners of the world giving steady and constant flow of information.

Social media is giving the business world a great platform to capture market far and wide. For example Bill Marriot of the Marriot Group is one of the most famous corporate blogger. Bill is the company chairman himself and does his own posts on weekly basis; do you know friends, the chairman’s existence on the blog has won the company loyal fans since they know they are getting the messages from the executive of the company itself. The company has generated millions of direct sales orders from this blog. Differentiation in handing the positioning plank does matter in marketing.

The blog needs to have its goals and objective sorted out first, and then it becomes easy to aim at them.  Many companies in the world are using blogs to interact with customers solving their problems. Caterpillar has blogs dedicated for their each product lines.

Blogs can clarify doubts and misunderstandings about the company, its reputation and its subsistence. It is an essential channel to explain the facts in situations of chaos. Red Cross blog keeps updating their activities and keeps giving more information on how to donate. Thus this blog gets responses for unexpected corners of the world through mainstream news items and articles. I once again want to stress here my point that blogs need to aim at clearly defined segments; then they do wonders in marketing. The clear identification of segments with   measurability of its effective size matters. Maintaining the blog with effective posts does great wonders. A well designed and updated blog attracts followers.

You must visit eBay’s blog. Though it is most “corporately” designed, it doesn’t give you that impression. Not only is the blog’s design bright and colorful, but the posts are written in an amiable style and the corporate press releases are interspersed with information about charities, interviews with sellers and much more. It’s one of the friendliest blogs.

Blogging is still considered a new medium. Some have made the best out of it while many others are still thinking about it. Whether a corporate blog or a personal blog, the fact remains that it has to be interesting and useful to readers. It needs regular posting. Giving readers what they really want for making them more likely to read a blog. Yes, corporate blogs can give corporate news along with something more. A blog will be read if it has information is worth reading.

Three elements work for the success of a blog: the content, freshness, and illustration.  Google has the best-known corporate blog in the world and for a very good reason. Besides announcing its new products and features, Google offers exciting glimpses behind the scenes at the company and introduces the world to some of its most important employees through its blog. The writing style is informal and the blog allows the world to know what’s going on inside the company.

In India corporate blogging is catching up; though the pace is slower. Indian companies from tech superstars to start-ups are using corporate blogs as a cost-effective method to reach out to their clients and also for brand building. At least 165,745,689 people are accessing the web and while 105,170,327 are surfing away each day. Let me tell you the first blog was developed in 1994.  Today there are 152 billion blogs on Internet. We are currently living in the information age. So, virtually every individual living in this age is looking for information that will help to improve the quality and standard of his/her life. Today, for every problem people tend to go online to look for information to solve their problems.

One recent survey reveals that people prefer reading blogs in the morning. Businesses that update their blogs 20 times a month i.e 4-5 times a week generate 5 times more traffic than those that update their blogs less than 4 times a month. The survey further revels that businesses that own and regularly update their blogs generate 4 times more lead than those that do not own a blog.

Blogs help to influence customers’ buying decisions and purchases. The information on blogs assists customers to make up their mind on the purchase of a product, it helps them to fine tune their choice, provides answers for most of their queries. Blogs are the best media vehicle to introduce new products to the world. Another survey reveals that companies that have more than 51% articles on their blogs experience a 77% increment in median monthly leads.

Lastly, whether the blog belongs to an organization or individual must not worry about the number of readers initially; the writing must continue. Rarely will a blog take off overnight; so one needs to be patient. Social networking has gripped the world today; we don’t know its future. As of today, producing and maintaining a blog has far fetching results for sure. And an important fact is good writing, in any form, will always remain in demand.

I want to add here that in India, Mr. Amit Agarwal has initiated a very useful move by making a directory named ‘Indianbloggers’ which gives useful information of Indian bloggers topic wise. It is very useful especially for researchers to find blogs which can add value to their research. They are a rich source.

The link http://indianbloggers.org is very detailed and lists some of the leading Indian blogs. Do visit the site to get very important information grouped in topics and the information of blogs.

In psychology a first impression is an experience when one person first comes across another person and forms a mental image or an impression of that person. The impression need not always be accurate; it varies depending on the observer’s frame of mind and the target (person, object, scene, etc.) being observed. First impressions are based on a wide range of characteristics: age, race, culture, language, gender, physical appearance, accent, posture, voice, smile, facial expressions, interest and of course the hearsay number of people present, and time allowed to process details observed. The first impressions given by individuals greatly influence how they are treated and viewed in many contexts of everyday life.

It’s proved that it takes just one-tenth of a second for us to judge someone and make a first impression. Imagine, how much time is one tenth of a second – and in that we form an opinion – some very important and some not so important.  Researchers have observed that when more time is spent, there is  variance in opinions formed. Not only are people quick to form first impressions, they like to stick to their first impressions many times. On the other hand, first impressions can be fairly accurate when the target presents himself/herself genuinely. Some people are really precise at understanding people. It is also observed that generally people are not good at perceiving artificial emotions or detecting lies.

We are trained from our childhood that the first impression is always the most important one. This is true when you are searching a job, admission for a professional course, when you are meeting your date for the first time, when you go for a party, a social gathering, or for a picnic. The same is also true for a product. First impressions do matter us a lot in our lives. It’s true about us as well as when we form one for others.

We all have a lot of firsts in life; practically every day – from buying groceries, vegetables, a book, magazine, visiting a blog or website, engaging a tutor, taking admission in a tuition class, meeting our teachers for the first time in their first lecture etc, etc. the list is long.  I personally think first impression should never be treated as the last impression. I am sure all of us on so many occasions must have formed wicked impressions about people, sportsmen, politicians, objects, places, actors, movies, songs, poetries etc. We don’t even spear the Almighty God!! The moment something goes wrong in our lives we start condemning the God. So, we are feeble in forming our impressions.

Imagine, if everyone was judged only on the basis of first impression and there would have been no second, third, fourth chance, what our life would be like? What would happen to individual creativity, individual brilliance and benevolence?

But, can we overlook the fact that the world is filled with cheaters liars, and backstabbers. It happens to all of us – sometimes when we are led to believe a thing to be true when it is not, that’s when we are deceived. Do listen to your heart when you are meeting someone important for the first time or when you are going to buy something as precious as a house or car and you are feeling uneasy, or when you feel not to drive down a particular road, and when you feel strongly like changing a job, or when you feel uncomfortable talking to someone, there are so many instances when your instincts caution you about something, listen to your inner self, respect your own feelings.  Don’t take hasty decisions. These first impressions warn you of some perils.

Remember, when at times you don’t feel great about something, some person, in sense you don’t get clarity about a situation, think why? Notice what happens in your body – check in with your gut first, then your shoulders, arms, legs, and any other part of your body that calls your awareness. Are you tense or relaxed? Do you feel uncomfortable? Take some time to let your physical sensations register, and notice what they tell you about the person or situation. For example, you might get this sensation of knotting in your stomach, a tightening in your throat, or simply that your body isn’t feeling good. At such times relax, take deep breaths don’t take a decision. Here your first impression is warning you of some impending loss, risk or failure.

Our brain and its associated powers are a living miracle. Our brain has an interesting built-in mechanism which acts as radar and needs to be understood in order to get the maximum benefit from it. To conclude, while our first impressions are frequently based upon instincts, impulse, intuitions and emotions; they are also built on our doubtful beliefs, not all are rational thought or fact-based evidence. In some cases, it really isn’t important if you are overly optimistic or pessimistic in your initial judgment. Though there are situations in which correctly predicting someone’s behavior can save your life or dramatically change it.

Please read this carefully: A few years ago, in Germany, a professor of criminology conducted an experiment that involved 500 law students. There were 12 unknown “guests.” These included the local police commander and the local prosecutor, the university treasurer and the public relations officer, some lawyers and court officials, and three convicted criminals. The students were to determine the profession of each of the guests, as well as which of the guests had to serve a prison sentence and for what crime. All of this was to be based only on their appearance and on the hobbies they said they had. And it is interesting to know what happened to the results? About 75 percent of the students succeeded in picking out the three real criminals. But an average of 60 percent of the students also identified the nine other guests as lawbreakers who in fact had a clean record! The local prosecutor was thought to be a potential drug pusher by 1 out of 7 of the students, and the police commander was thought to be a thief by 1 out of 3 of them! Assessments based on impressions can be far off the mark.

Conclusion: Appearances can be deceptive.