The document provides a guide on blogging, discussing the importance of selecting a theme, committing to regular content creation, and understanding the long-term goals for the blog. It covers practical aspects like hosting, design, and customization using platforms like WordPress, along with strategies for attracting traffic through SEO and social media. The author emphasizes the need for clear content ownership and cautions against the permanence of online posts.

1. What you need to know. Nothing more. By Kestrel Lee http://sg.linkedin.com/in/kestrellee Blog and search

2. To start … Time won’t allow me to explain every term used in this presentation. Google them when you are interested. That’s my excuse in case I forget what they mean : P

3. Why talk about blogs when I don’t have one I had been scarred by experiences with blogs and social media. My thoughts are not meant for public viewing. I have utterly no interest in gaining influence as a blogger.

4. My blogger campaign: 2009 Valentine’s campaign Over 2500 photo entries based on a very small budget. Love Guru used a blogger persona, a Live Spaces blog and Messenger’s "What's new" feature to engage couples for a photo contest. It was so successful that people are still signing up to be part of Love Guru's network months after the campaign: http://loveguru2009.spaces.live.com/

5. When should you do a blog Is it about something you like to share: fashion, lifestyle or even your cleavage? = 〉 Such areas provide potential “focus points” to create sticky niche content. Personal content such as cam whoring, rants about topics like food, health, hygiene, sports and sex can establish your blog quickly and attract a following. Example: Fauzi Rassull has a following among Singapore's fashionable youngsters. He advocates an anti-fat “Thin is in” message with glamour shots of his tall lanky frame on his site.

6. Don’t do it just to get off your chest … Suggest you have a drink with your BFF, get it offloaded and ridiculously drunk . Then hope that he forgets about it tomorrow and you all don’t end up sleeping together. Words may call come back to haunt you. Nothing online will ever be forgotten by people or search engines.

7. Because you may get it straight back in the face If your content has no privacy setting, you have no grounds and reason to complain if the public. Laws governing privacy online are very different from those governing privacy in real life. When someone makes an unpopular post that irritates a lot of people, there will be people hunting the original poster online in all forums and blogs? This online manhunt trend is now being increasingly called as “CSIed”. Taiwan Typhoon example . New “Obama Girl” in China: www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/25/wang-zifei-beauty-in-blac_n_370959.html

8. Examples from Singapore “ Mom's friend sent her some blog post by some bleeding stupid 40-year old singaporean called XXXX (WHY do all the idiots have my surname why?!) whining about how singapore is such an insecure place, how old ppl (ie, 40 and above) fear for their jobs, how the pool of foreign "talent" (dismissively chucked between inverted commas) is really a tsunami that will consume us all (no actually he didn't say that, he probably said Fouren Talern Bery Bad.), how the reason why no one wants kids is that they're a liability in this world of fragile ricebowls, how the government really needs to save us from inevitable doom but they aren't because they are stick-shoved-up-ass elites who have no idea how the world works, yadayadayadayada.” “ Do not be bitter and go on slapping on the Government senselessly because you did not get any fruits or benefits from your forefather. You will have to blame on your karma or your forefathers for not getting all the paths right for their off springs. My folks did the right thing by getting all the stuffs ready for us and we will never ever need to nag about the Government giving jobs to foreigners instead of locals. In fact, we create jobs for others. Our folks even make sure that we guys do not need to squeeze into public transport by getting each of us a personal car.”

9. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Set the tone Identify a unique, exclusive or interesting area to blog about, be it your business, your pet, your life or even your politics. Commit yourself to blogging regularly, preferably every day, especially when there’s an interesting piece of news to keep people coming back for more. State clearly your background if it has any bias on your blog. Be clear about what you want to share about yourself and what you plan to conduct this blog in tone and content in your profile. Be clear that you welcome links to other sites and blogs and all comments but they will need to undergo moderation as you blog’s policy.

10. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Set the work scope Do you need a site map, or analytics (Piwik or Google Analytics) ？ Depends. How long term is this blog meant to be? Is it meant to be an online journal like Livejournal.com Are you planning to build any brands with it? Who else will be blogging or sharing content on it? If you are doing it as a hobby, as a journal for friends or plan to blog irregularly, just keep on doing what you are doing. It’s ok.

11. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: For the long term professionally Download the WorldPress publishing platform from WordPress.org and host it on a standalone server. Please follow this closely: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Detailed_Instructions Allows more personalisation in design themes and analytical tools. Gives you greater control over privacy setting and content ownership. Insulate yourself from downtime from WordPress.com

12. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Customisation Text editor: Edits text, configuration files, HTML or PHP scripting, as well as CSS (look and formatting). As WordPress is basically text files and database tables (like most websites), any text editor can work with WordPress. However, look for ones that allow WYSIAYG: http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/03/09/9-of-the-best-rich-text-editors-reviewed/ For Mac users, do try TextWrangler (not WYSIWYG) as it supports remote ftp editing which is always handy on web projects: http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/

13. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Hosting Don’t be kei-kiang . Show examples of the design, layout, content (text or pictures) of what you plan to do to people who know hosting. Generally, do look for a hosting service that provides: MYSQL version 4.0 or greater, PHP version 4.3 or greater.

14. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Design Aesthetics Pick a theme or wallpaper, as well as an interesting avatar or logo Wordpress.org: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ PremiumWP: http://www.premiumwp.com WooThemes: http://www.woothemes.com Best WordPress Themes: http://www.bestwpthemes.com/

15. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Download plugins E nrich the experience of your blog : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ EXAMPLES: All-in-one SEO Pack : Search-proof your blog Google XML Sitemaps : Fastest way to get on to Google Akismet : To filter out the spam Get Recent Comments : Get the most recent comments/trackback on your blog LinkWithin : Encourages stickiness on your blog with recommended stories and associated thumbnails, along with each blog post.

16. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Upload plugins They enable features such as: Recent Posts : Allows readers to read your latest posts. Subscribe to Comments : Notify readers of new comments to a blog entry TweetMeme Retweet Button : Adds a button to retweet your posts Ultimate Google Analytics (only if you are going into paid search) : GA on blog. WP-o-Matic: Creates posts animated from RSS/Atom feeds WP-UserOnline : Display the number of users on your WordPress blog with stats on who and where they are. WP Super Cache : Cache your blog so that it doesn’t take too long to load. WP Twitip ID : Allows users to put their twitter account user name next to their comments, which is then linked with their twitter account. As twitter is such a popular social network tool, it is highly universal and highly popular, and all your users need to use it is an active Twitter account. It works by placing a line of code in your comments template file. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-twitip-id/

17. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Useful social media plugins Retagger : Allows your commenter’s to leave an icon next to their comments. If a mouse is held over the comment, the links to their social networks are revealed together with their name. Retagger supports over 180 social networks, so many are catered for by this plugin. To use Retagger, the commenter has to have a Retagger account. For this reason, you could post a post, or configure a sidebar widget to tell people how to get one and what they do. http://www.blippr.com/apps/337890-Retaggr Social Profiles for multiuser bloggers or registered users : Allows the promotion of their social profiles along with their comments, there is a good incentive for users of all types to register. The plugin allows users to enter their user names for up to 10 social networks, by adding fields for them to do this. This can be extended through modifying the PHP if you know what you are doing. When a registered user comments on your blog, the links to their social networks are displayed as either text or imagery. This, as you can imagine helps theircomments stand out and enhances their posts. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-profiles/

18. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Useful social media plugins Tweetmeme : This plugin is one of the unique ones that allows you to promote either your blog posts, while promoting your social media profile. Most social media plugins do one or the other. This one works a little like Digg and provides “vote” buttons on your blog post. This allows readers of your blog pot to easily retweet your blog posts. The default setting will begin tweets with RT@tweetmeme…together with the post title and the URL of your blog. This is customisable however, by updating the settings to list your Twitter username, and thus the tweet is changed to RT@YourTwitterIDHere…via@tweetmeme. This no t onlyallows people on Twitter to view your post, but to see your Twitter ID too. Other options that are available are to select the position and size of the button, as well as providing the ability to display it on your RSS feed. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/

19. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Domain Pick a domain name that is closely affiliated with what your content is about to improve memory recall. Chances are they may still be available as “ .sg ”, not dot.com or dot.com.sg Pick short and easy domain names (up to 67 characters) to make it easy to remember and to reduce any spelling error and avoid the use of letters/numbers “O” and “0”, “1” and “l”.

20. Let’s now talk about setting a blog: Building traffic Traffic to a blog generally comes from three main sources: Loyal Readers: So build your content focus and blog frequently Search Engines: Get an SEO plug-in ASAP Referral Traffic: build links to authoritative sites with relevant content

21. Let’s talk about setting a blog: Building traffic with search Do research on what is the most commonly used search word relevant to your content and see if a domain name that incorporates the word or use the actual word itself if it is available in an actual domain. Google tends to give a higher page rank to domain names that incorporates a popular search word for a particular area. Example: http://bagaholicboy.blogspot.com/ or Singapore’s one and only dedicated blog about bags with a huge following among Singaporean women.

22. Let’s talk about Search: Organic Search Content on WordPress are automatically syndicated throughout the WordPress community via features like RSS, Digg, reddit etc. Blog posts should also be nominated to content aggregation portals or meta blogs: ping.sg , tomorrow.sg , sgblogs.com , bloggersg.com Tag your text, pictures and video for every post, so they will appear Social search may soon be integrated with normal search. So please create a blogger Google profile before someone does it for you: google.com/profiles If you are running a business, register your location and business with maps.google.com.sg & www.google.com/local/add . Add custom WordPress comments plugin, so only returning visitors get a search engine friendly link: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/hobo-custom-link-love-for-wordpress/

23. Let’s talk about Search: SEO vs. link-backs Search engine optimisation (embedding keywords in content) does not work very well these days but take the effort to do the following . Write HTML title (55 char) tag which should also be the name of your blog post. Add a description tags (155-60 char) to summarise the page or post in the search engine results page (SERP). Submit your website URL to all the relevant search engines. Once you have installed all the search-related plug-ins, please focus on building links to authoritative sites. Skip banners. Go with a text link: Can you review my site on yours and I’ll post the review on my site with a link back to yours?

24. Let’s talk about Search: Paid search or bought keywords You need to get a Google Analytics account to fully track the performance and click-throughs of different keywords from the SERP to your website. Paid search creates an initial burst to attract people to click through to your page. Once enough people have done so, Google will recognize your site and rank it based on the traffic . Introduce a cap based on the amount of money you are willing to spend, so Google will now spend more than what you willing to pay. Identify and stick to a few keywords, set search perimeters to location or market.