Blogging Basics
Blogging is an interactive process where visitors to a blog site can leave comments in response to articles or stories, referred to as posts, created by the site owner or publishers. The term “blog” is short for Web Log and was apparently first used in 1997 by Jorn Barger to describe a site he maintained comprised of a list or “log” of links to sites he believed to be of interest. Since then, the development community has developed a variety of content management and blogging applications with a wide range of capabilities that have made the process of publishing content and exchanging ideas almost as simple as creating documents in a word processor.
Blogging History
Early blogging was dominated by personal journals only relevant to friends and family members of the publishers. It wouldn’t be long before the interactive features of this venue would come to the attention of commercial enterprises. Most major news organizations, for example, dismissed the ravings of blog publishers as unprofessional nonsense until they recognized the large following garnered by some after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the success of political websites with blogs leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential Elections. Though many saw their subscriptions decline with the growth of news websites some, such as the Washington Post and the UK’s Guardian, were able to gain a wider national or international market implementing blogging features. The comment capabilities of blogging garnered a wide following and instant feedback not possible with snail mail letters to the editor. The increased traffic with this community participation also brought another revenue source from online ads.
Blogs have come to compliment websites often replacing e-mail lists and bulletin or message boards. The dynamic capabilities of comments have replaced these antiquated electronic communication features. Add the RSS feature included with most publishing packages and the publisher’s message can be delivered to attending community without visiting the site in a fashion similar to the e-mail lists. These feeds are not subject to the spam problems that make potential customers leery of subscribing to your list. They simply subscribe to your offering and follow it with Google Reader, Bloglines or a variety of other feed readers.
As the tools to manage blogs have become widely available their practical use has grown exponentially. They are popular in the online community where developers and techies exchange information and ideas such as the Google Geo Development Blog for Google Maps developers or CNET where users can read articles on a variety of tech products and respond with instant review about their own experiences. There are a variety of opinion blogs from all over the political spectrum including Little Green Footballs, RealOutlook and MoveOn.org. Educational organizations use blogs to present and discuss tops or conduct lessons. The Law Professor Blogs Network uses this platform on their home page to provide a variety of publishers a place to present and discuss current legal issues. Extensive use by commercial enterprises include the presentation of new products or, in the case of real estate agencies, new listing and the ability to get instant feedback. Some site include the use of video in their posts with demonstrations or just to make the presentation easier to follow. On Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk has taken his families $4 million wine business and grown it to a $40 million business with a dramatic blogging effort that has gained a substantial online following of his aggressive use of video.
Blog Hosting
As mentioned above, a blog can be used to compliment your website. You can install a blogging package in a separate directory on your site or use it to replace your existing content. WordPress, for example, offers a free download or you may find it comes packaged with your hosting service. You can find extensive information on this in previous posts [ Choosing A Web Host, cPanel Website Management and Blogging With WordPress ]. This is the best option if you already have a domain name and want to improve and existing identity or your are committed to developing one.
Blogging sites are another way to go. There are several free services such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and TypePad. These are blog hosting sites where you sign up for an account and can be ready to start entering content in less than an hour. In the case of Blogger, your Internet address [ "URL" or Universal Resource Locator ] would read something like “yourname.blogspot.com” depending on what you choose at sign up. WordPress.com offers this service as well. All of these sites provide a simple way to build your blog with many of the common blogging features without the need of programming knowledge.
Basic Blog Features
Application Interface - As mentioned earlier, these blogging platforms make entering text as simple as your word processor. You will have easy buttons for formatting text such as bold, italic, bulleted lists, block quotes and inserting images. However, you will need to take some time setting up the other features so be patient.
Time Stamps - Each post will automatically be dated and timestamped in reverse chronological order. You can on drafts without setting a permanent timestamp until you choose to publish. If you subsequently find an error and want to correct it. If so, the date and time will remain the publication date.
Archiving - This feature shows in the right hand column of this site where articles are archived by month and year. You may have the option of setting this feature a different time frame such as weekly. You may also have to select this in your site configuration to implement it.
Categories - Another feature appearing in the right column of this site, this provides you with the ability to provide tags to each post. You can also attach multiple tags to your posts where the content is pertinent to multiple topics. This can also have value relative to public searches.
Comments - Here is the interactive element that defines what blogging is. This allows readers to respond to the publishers post. Whether a response posted by a customer about a product or readers responding to a news article comments are what brings a blog alive in contrast to a standard website. Depending on the platform you select you will have the choice of accepting comments from any visitors or restricted this privilege to registered members of your community.
“Next, Last, More” Links - Common to most these platforms is a link to the Last or Next post. To regress a bit, some platforms allow you to determine how many posts will appear on you main output page whether you install your blog on a sub-directory of your site or output to your home page. You may also be able to limit how much of a story appears on the page in which case there will be a “read more” link taking you to the full post. There you will see the “Next, Last” links. Also on the output page with the abbreviated stories you will see a link to “previous posts” or “recent posts” if you find yourself back in the archive.
Think Before Blogging!
Make sure you understand what you want to accomplish with your blogging effort. I may be simple such as doing a private blog where you want to get feed back from your marketing team on new promotions or products and keep the blog private. If you hope to promote a product or gain a following for an idea be sure to search the internet for competing site. You will also want to identify the market segment you hope to attract [ Website Marketing Profiles ]. If you hope to gain a following you also have to understand that your readers will expect posts on a regular basis. Often, bloggers will gain contributors who will help with developing content. Otherwise, you will have the task of compiling posts on a regular basis. We will be developing blog related posts in the near future pertaining to making your blog visible to search engines and marketing in general. Until then, good luck with your blogging venture.
