Eastside Books - Blogging & Socail Media Talk

Eastside Books Blog talk Richard Galbraith

Contents Who am I? What is blogging and social media? What platform to use? Getting going, the circle of social media Things to remember

Who am I? Richard Galbraith @ricgalbraith Blogger Writer Social media participant Conversationalist Online marketer An online voice

What is blogging and social media? “ Social media are primarily Internet - and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings” – Wikipedia 2009 Community Collaboration Conversation

What is blogging and social media? There are a huge selection of platforms you can choose from to interact with people, learn from and push content to. The more you have, the larger your online presence is From the top, clockwise: Social news – Digg Social bookmarking – Delicious Media repositories – Youtube Life streaming – Friendfeed Live streaming – Ustream Forums & Review sites Social networks – Myspace Micro-blogging - Twitter

What platforms to use When it comes to getting started in blogging and social media, choosing the right tool to suit your needs is just the start. To really understand which tools you want to use and why, begin with a content plan

What do I want to achieve through blogging?

What should be my main avenue of content?

What should be the theme / topic of my content?

How much time to I have to do this?

Do I want to make money out of blogging?

Do I have a budget, can I spend any money?

How long do I have before I assess myself?

Do I know anyone who has a blog already?

How do I plan on getting links?

Do I have a selection of key words?

Circle of social media If you want to start blogging, here is the path that I recommend

Choose your content theme

Try typing out a post in a word processor

Choose a blogging platform

There are loads of platforms out there, have a look around and chose one you feel comfortable with, wordpress and blogger are the two most popular

Choose any other platforms you want to use

This could be twitter and youtube, or flickr and youtube, or however many or few you would like, depending on the type of content you think you’re going to produce

Choose an online name and set up accounts

Have the same name across platforms so people can find you easily and begin to recognise your name

Make yourself a six month timeline

Make a list of content for a few weeks at a time, make goals such as two posts a week and stick to it as best you can

Use blog directories and online tools to find other bloggers

There are a number of directories and tools you can find just by googling ‘blog directories’ look into these and find other bloggers, begin talking with them and interacting, with two ideas in mind, firstly, to find interesting new people, secondly to try and gain links to your blog

Start blogging and remember to enjoy yourself

Things to remember A couple of things to bear in mind:

Blogging and online stuff takes time

Blogging won’t make you rich

The likelihood of it getting you a book deal is extremely low

It will make you friends

It will probably make you stressed out at some point

Link backs are the key to success

Have fun with it

Follow me on twitter @ricgalbraith

Sites to use A couple of sites to get you going

www.wordpress.com

This is one of the best blogging platforms available, it’s extremely malleable and easy to use

www.twitter.com

This is the site of the moment, it’s good for micro-blogging, networking and finding other bloggers and writers online

www.technorati.com

This is a blog indexing tool, register with it to get an authority number and find other bloggers to get in touch with

www.google.com

Googles tools are some of the best online, their RSS reader and their Analytics and their Adsense services are particularly useful for beginners, intermediates and advanced users alike

Sites to use Other sites that you might find useful