This document discusses developing and promoting a blog to establish expertise. It recommends writing about topics you know to build social richness and engagement with readers. Choosing a blogging platform depends on desired functionality and ease of use. Key factors for promotion include using descriptive titles, search engine optimization through linking and keywords, and sharing the blog on social media. Maintaining an interactive dialogue with comments helps increase online presence.

1. Developing and Promoting Your Blog:
Becoming Known (Respectably)

2. Why Blog?
Being in the business of anything means
having expertise on that subject.
One way to demonstrate this is to relay
your knowledge via a blog.
A blog creates a connection between you
and those interested in the same subject
matter, allowing them a convenient way to
access your knowledge and to respond with
commentary.

3. Blogging and
Presence
Lombard and Ditton name six
approaches to presence:
Presence as Social Richness
Presence as Realism
Presence as Transportation
Presence as Immersion
Presence as Social Actor within Medium
Presence as Medium as Social Actor

4. The Three Keys
Social Richness:
engagement
Transportation:
does the blog
“bring” information
Immersion:
involvement through
the medium

5. Blogging for
Social Richness
A blog provides an excellent way to
increase the “Social Richness” of an
interaction by starting a realistic
dialogue (albeit asynchronous) with
the user.
Style carries with it a sense of the
writer’s personality as well.

6. Choosing a Subject
Write what you know, keeping in mind that
it may take you some time to find your
voice.

7. Blogger, Wordpress,
or....?
Each blogging platform has its pros and cons. Shop around to see which
suits your needs. Wordpress is renowned for having the most versatility,
but perhaps you are just looking for the most intuitive interface and
quickest setup which might lead you to choose another blogging service.
from http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/

8. Things to keep in mind
when you are posting
Getting traffic to
your site
involves:
using descriptive
titles
search engine
optimization
promoting your blog
off-site, eg. listing
your blog

9. Descriptive Titles
Don’t “out-clever” yourself from
being found on the internet.
The titles represent meta information
that search engines will use to
locate your blog.
Think of keywords and phrases that
represent the theme of your posts.

10. Some Examples
For a non-business example of clever
being ok, check out: fupenguin.com
For a more professional site, we have:

11. Search Engine
Optimization
Link building: Google uses the links on
your site to judge its relevance to a
particular search term. So if you write
an article that relates to another
article, link back to it.
You can use the “Google External Keyword
Tool” to help you choose the words that
get the most hits.
Viewing your analytics will also help you
to pinpoint your audience.

12. Promoting Your Blog
Off-site
Remember to use all the
resources at your
disposal including
Linkedin, Facebook,
Twitter, and Digg.
Forums more suited to
industry include:
Boxesandarrows.com, A
List Apart, and
Undrin.com
image from Joe Pemberton at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/

13. Widgets, etc.
The RSS feed
created by your
blog can be read
and displayed in
numerous ways.
Ex. Linkedin has
Blog Link, powered
by Typepad.

14. Facebook has Simplaris Blogcast and
Wordbook (for Wordpress blogs). Each
has settings for showing a recent post
on your wall.

15. Get Out There
and Blog
Suggested
readings:

16. Presence continued.
P.S. Remember to write what you know
and to interact with other bloggers
online. A good blog is a dialogue
between your posts, posts by other
authors, and users comments.
Created by Christine Rosakranse for
RPI - COMM