Intro to Blogging
Jill Davis Doughtie
Blogging: participating in online conversations
- Blogging effectively is not just a matter of broadcasting information. Effective blogging has two components:
- Reading: seeking out and understanding what other people writing online in your subject area
- Writing: posting original content AND linking and responding to what other people have written elsewhere
Overview
- Blog definition and history
- Anatomy of a blog
- RSS and reading blogs
- Why blog?
- Business and organization blogs: What to write about
- Blogging guidelines
- How to start a blog
Blog definition and history
- Blog: a website where entries are displayed in reverse chronological order.
- Short for "weblog"
- Blogs began as personal journals where people posted:
- collections of links to other sites
- information about what had happened during the day
- essays and thoughts
- A Swarthmore student named Justin Hall created the first website of this type in 1994.
- Dave Winer's blog, Scripting News, began in 1997.
- In 1999 the first blogging software was launched and blogging took off.
Anatomy of a blog
- Date-stamped entries called "posts".
- Blog home page: Most recent 5-10 posts displayed in reverse chron order.
- Permalinks: Posts can be viewed and linked to individually.
- Categories: Posts can be viewed grouped by subject.
- Archives: Posts can be viewed grouped by date range.
- Blogroll: links to other blogs in the sidebar.
- Comments: most blogs allow readers to comment on individual posts.
- RSS: most blogs publish RSS feeds.
RSS and reading blogs
- RSS: Really Simple Syndication
- RSS readers: like TiVo for the internet
- Choose a free reader (Google Reader, Bloglines)
- Tell it which blogs you'd like to subscribe to
- It tells you when those blogs have published new posts
- You can read the posts from within your reader
- You don't have check all of the blogs you're following one by one to find out which of them have updated recently.
- You can also subscribe to RSS feeds for:
- Google blog search terms
- Google news search terms
- Craigslist search terms
- Flickr tags
Why blog?
- Communicating with the public
- Print media, radio, television, traditional websites: one-way communication
- Blogs: ongoing back-and-forth conversations
- Community building
- Creating a stronger internet presence
Business and organization blogs: What to blog about
- Announce upcoming events
- Post videos, photos, stories about past events
- Publish essays, articles, tutorials
- Link to resources elsewhere online that your readers will find useful
- Industry and organization news
- Profile organization members (employees, customers)
- Educate readers about your product or service
- Member feedback and online publicity, good and bad, along with responses
Blogging guidelines
- Think about writing a blog post like talking to people at a cocktail party - or if you're blogging more formally,
like making a presentation at a conference.
- Write about things you would find interesting in those situations.
- Think twice about writing anything you wouldn't share in those situations.
- Don't blog things you'd find deadly boring, useless, or insulting under those circumstances.
Blogging guidelines
- When you write a blog post or comment, you are adding to your online identity. Write things you'd be happy
to know were being read by:
- Your mother
- Your dental hygienist
- Your children's friends' parents
- Your children as adults
- Your neighbor three houses down
- Your boss
- The person interviewing you for your next job
- Anonymity: Don't rely on it. It's difficult to keep secrets on the internet over time.
How to start a blog
- Free hosted blogging: Wordpress and Blogger
- User-friendly
- Hard to mess up
- Updated automatically
- Free
- If you want to host your blog on your own server: Wordpress.org
- More options
- More ways to mess your blog up if you don't know what you're doing
- You install updates
- You pay for server space
How to start a blog
- Free hosted Wordpress recommended for beginners (http://www.wordpress.com)
- Terrific comment spam filter
- Create pages as well as posts (great for creating simple websites with a blog on the home page)
- Low cost upgrades, such as assigning any domain name you control to your blog
In Summary
- Effective blogging involves reading and listening as well as writing.
- Blogs are for people or organizations who want to engage in public online conversations.
- Blogs are terrific for community building.
- If you don't already use an RSS reader, immediately go to http://www.google.com/reader or http://www.bloglines.com and get started!