Introduction To Blogging

Introduction to Blogging
What is blogging? How do you read blogs? How do you write blogs?

Content – The substance of any inbound marketing campaign
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Makes it easier for potential customers to find content
Building sites
Inbound Links (getting others to link to your site)
Social Media – amplifies content
“When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.”
Three Key Components

From Hubspot: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4416/Inbound-Marketing-the-Next-Phase-of-Marketing-on-the-Web.aspx

A blog (a contraction of the term "web log")is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaningto maintain or add content to a blog. (from Wikipedia)
A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. (from Wikipedia)
A blog is a conversation – someone writes, others comment and comments are responded to
More than 12% of Fortune 500 companies maintain corporate blogs
What is a blog?

A few examples

More examples

RSS (most commonly expanded as "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format (via Wikipedia)
Can take the content from one site (such as a blog) and publish it / syndicate it elsewhere, such as:
Feed Reader
Twitter Status (but remember, 1 way communication)
Facebook status update
RSS: Really Simple Syndication

Go to the site itself
Feed reader – enter the feed into a feed reader (aggregator) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators
Google Reader (http://reader.google.com)
How to read blogs

Hosted on your own company’s website, using content management software such as
WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org) - free
Joomla (http://www.joomla.org) – free
Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) – free
This requires a domain name and hosting plan. Hosting plans are available from $7/month up to over $100/month from companies like Bluehostor MediaTemple or hundreds of others
Hosted on a blog storage service, such as:
WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com) – free for wordpress.com domain, extra to host on your own domain
Blogger (http://blogger.com) – free for blogger.com domain, extra to host on your own domain (foundied in 1999, purchased by Google in 2003)
Provides limited functionality, may have on-screen ads
No hosting cost, but at whim of the service, not yourself and your own service
How to write your own blog

Stay on Topic
Be informative
Old news is not news
Adhere to a Schedule
Clarity and simplicity
Keyword-rich
Include related keywords in title (<10-12 words in title)
Quantity Matters (better a lot of small posts than one large post)
Frequency
Spell Checking and Proof Reading – yes, good writing matters
RSS
How to write for blogs: 10 Great Tips from Master New Media
Additional resource: How to Write Great Blog Content http://www.problogger.net/how-to-write-great-blog-content/

Keyword rich text – not too much but include important keywords in post title, body
Natural and organic – write for the reader, not the search engine
Anchor text –link to the keyword, instead of saying “click here to learn about the latest widget that will make the world a better place” say “The latest widget will make the world a better place.”
“Check this out” is considered spammy
Write useful and well-written content that people love to read
Content Writing & An Introduction to SEO

Content, Links, Structure
http://www.seowizz.net/2009/07/seo-content-writing.html

Google
Google Blogsearchhttp://blogsearch.google.com
Links on other sites
Content Aggregators – sites that list other blogs and update them in real time
Technoratihttp://technorati.com/
How to Find Blogs

http://www.theclinegroup.com	94
http://clinegroup.asoundstrategy.com	20
http://theclinegroup.net	10
http://www.avihein.com	7

Introduction To Blogging

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