You know an idea has taken off when it becomes a household word. Blog is one of those words. It is both a noun and a verb.  I am “blogging” is action oriented and when describing a blog you use it as a noun.In fact, the blogging phenomena have reached across all demographics. It is not just for writers any more. Blogs are created to communicate and engage customers and a specific audience as much as it is for sharing our deepest thoughts and feelings.

Blogging has, in fact become vital to cyberspace. It is a necessary component of many website’s marketing and customer service strategies.

Blogs or online journals as they are also known are websites that are updated on a regular basis. The thoughts and “posts” are arranged in chronological order with the latest “post” being the one that people see first.  Blogs have categories  that are organized so visitors can easily find topics of interest. By using categories, you can go deep on subjects instead of the more broad stroke writing of most websites content.

Content

Typically, a blog’s content would greatly depend on the topic it’s dealing with. If you’re advertising something, perfume, apparel, or a vintage automobile, you could feature catalogs of the products mentioned. Personal blogs consists of daily happenings, observations, comments about another’s comment.

For example: Schools and universities can write posts containing their campus’ historical background, faculty and subjects or courses offered. A blog should be updated daily to give readers reasons to keep coming back for more.

Feedback

Comments are very much welcome. Come one, come all! It doesn’t matter who leaves a comment as long as somebody writes something. If you write compelling content and the content has an effect on the visitors which prompts her or him to leave a comment, then you know people are actually reading your posts.  That is when real interaction takes place.  

Tools and Concepts

Blogging can be confusing for those who don’t understand how the process works. What in the world does RRS, URL, blogroll, and all that jazz mean? How can I use it?

For greater understanding, here are the basic terms and definitions used in blogging:

Archives –collection of all your posts on one page preserved in a file to be easily recalled.  

Blogosphere – The internet blogging community

Blogrolls – a categorized list of other people’s blogs listed on a blog (linked to their sites)

Comment Spam – irrelevant comments posted on a web page containing  too many domain urls

Downloads – a verb pertaining to the pictures, audios, or videos streamed from the author’s server or website.

Excerpt – summarized ideas of the post including a part of the entire article

RSS – a family of web feed formats used for Web syndication. Short form for Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0), Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0), RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0). WordPress generates RSS 2.0

Guests – are the readers, viewers, visitors, etc., who visits your site

Hosts – web hosts that ‘house’ your website. Can also mean

Introduction – preliminary part of the blog page showing the personal profile of the author or a brief description of the subject

Links – A link to a specific article; also known as a “permalink” or “hyperlink”

Photoblogging – a blog predominantly using and focusing on photographs and images. Photoblogs are created by photobloggers

Podcasting – a method of distributing multimedia files (audio / videos) online using feeds for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Podcastsare created by podcasters.

Blogcasting – the blog and the podcast merged into a single website.

Vlogging – Also called video blogging. Shortened to vlog. Posted by vlogger. A form of blogging using video instead of text.

Moblogging – Also called moblogs. A blog posted and maintained via mobile phone. Moblogs are created by mobloggers.

Plugins – combined term for plug-ins, these are characters or scripts adding additional function to the site

To get a feel for blogging, do a search for topics that interest you. The results will serve up some websites, blogs and other resources. One great resource for finding quality blogs is Technorati .  With Technorati you can find blogs of every genre, size and category.  It is one of the first places I would look.

Listen to this Free Audio: 30 Blogging Tips in 30 Minutes http://www.heidirichards.com/audio/BloggingtipsProgram.mp3

Learn more about the Blogging for Business Program (on sale for $19.95 thru July 31st – regular price $57!)

And if you are in South Florida, be sure to check out the “HOW TO GET YOUR BLOG ON ” Workshop
Now You Can Learn To Set Up Your Own Professional Or Profitable WordPress Blogs..