Chapter 2: Advanced Blogging
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Blog has become an essential tool for communication in my professions: school staffs, reporters, etc. People use blog to throw out their ideas in the pool of internet, and have their contents examined by the ever-growing crowd. A successful blog would be dominated by the audience, rather than by the writer. The writer would facilitate good posts and items to encourage the virtual-community to actively involve in discussion revolving the topic. Blogs not only provide a place for the virtual-community to discuss, it also powers “a growing wave of independent-journalism start-ups.)
Blog Basics
Do you want to blog? Go to www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog.
Blog consists off:
- It’s frequently updated in reversed-chronological order
- Each post consists of a headline and a body.
- It contains links for comments to let readers share their opinions on a certain topic.
Blogs can be published by anyone with ability to type and click, as easy as sending an email. After the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, blogs became predominant for people to share opinions about the attack and people became aware of their ability to let their voices heard throughout the globe.
Blogging involves a variety of online activity that were discussed in Ch. 1. The blogger should have streams of news available via RSS feeds in order to incorporate into the blog. Also, the blogger should explore other blogs to find out what is working for them and what is not.
There are several terms that the blogger should be aware of:
- Post: An entry on a blog, or to post content on the blog
- Permalink: A link provided in the content of the blog. It provides direct access to the related items or articles regarding a topic, or a word mentioned in each post.
- Trackback: A communication tool between blogs to help readers know who is linking each post
- Blogroll: A collection of links that show the readers what sites the blogger visits often.
- Vlog: Blog made with video.
- Moblog: Blog made with mobile device.
How to Start a Blog
- Name your blog (1 to 3 words)
- Provide a short description or a catchy phrase of what your blog is about
- Describe what you will write in your blog
- Choose a blog system (Blogger, WordPress, etc.)
- Name the URL of your blog
- Choose the theme of your blog to make it cool
- Customize your blog (Fonts, colors, templates, widgets, gadgets, CSS, etc.)
- Start posting blog posts!
How to Build an Audience
- Regularly publish high-quality posts
- Write effective headlines
- Participate in community
- Put the reader first — effectively communicate with the readers
- Organize your ideas
- Be direct — use short, declarative sentences
- Be the authority, with personality — narrow down your topic with distinctive voice and a conversational writing style
- Make your posts scanable — use typographical techniques to make each post stand out so that the readers can easily scan through your posts
- Link, summarize and analyze — attribute to the original writer as supposed.
- Be specific with headlines — don’t forget to be punchy, either.
- Have a good attitude — Don’t worry about traffic. Just write about what you’re interested in
- Use photos and screenshots to help explaining better
- Post early, post often
- Read, comment and link other blogs
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