Always have your blog on your website. This prevents brand confusion and also gets your main website a good Google rank.

Transcription

1 Blogging Module 2 Setting up a Blog and going live by the end of the day Getting started: Choosing a blogging platform There are many blogging platforms that you can choose and some are better than others. The main thing to look for is whether they allow you to do the basics. Individual blog posts. Comments. A comment moderation system. Timed blog posts. Feed. My preferred software is Wordpress. It s free and available from A big advantage of Wordpress is there is a huge community of developers that male all types of free plugins that make the software even more powerful. There is also software called Movable Type, which is not free but has good support. You can have them remotely host your site using their Typepad.com website. Google/Blogger will also host your website but Blogger software is more limited. Always have your blog on your website. This prevents brand confusion and also gets your main website a good Google rank. We re in. What are the basics of Wordpress? Dashboard: Top Left of the page. This is a onestop shop giving stats and access to writing posts. Write: Write a blog post. Write a page. Fill in the form, click publish. Your thoughts are on the Internet. Manage: Lists all blog posts and gives you access to the mechanics of Wordpress Comments: Manage all the comments on your blog Blogroll: Terrible name. This is your nod to other bloggers. Recommended sites. Presentation: Pimping your blog. This controls the look of the blog. Plugins: Further pimping your blog using software addons. Users: Add more people to the blog. Control the access rights. Options: Powerful options for setting up your blog. Write a Blog Post What are the components? Title: Same as subject line in an . Very important to search engines. Post Body: This is where you type the body of the blog post. Again, like an this is the main part of the . By default you use the Visual editor to write the blog post which gives you a Microsoft Word like interface for writing the blog post. There is also a Code tab which allows the purists amongst us to insert code into the page. Categories: Additional labels for the Blog Post. Related to areas e.g. Politics, Business, Sport, depending on what topics you cover on the blog/for your business. Visitors can filter

2 blog posts by Category by clicking on the Category name. A blog post can have more than one Category. Very important for Search Engines. Discussion: This is where you decide if you want comments on the blog post or not and whether you want trackbacks. Trackbacks are explained further down in this document. Post Password: You can password protect a blog post. The public however will see that it s password protected and see the Title. Post Status: Control whether a blog post is in Draft (default), is Private (public cannot see it) or Published (Live on the Internet). When you create a blog post and save it, it stays in Draft. Only when you change to Published can it be seen on the Internet. Post Timestamp: The date and time of the Blog Post. Changing the timestamp to a future date is how you time blog posts to be published in the future. Post Author: Changing author of a blog post, if you want to. Upload: You can upload images and files directly from inside the Wordpress window and control the size and names of files/images. Optional Excerpt: Instead of displaying the full blog post on the front of the blog, you can have it only showing an excerpt. You can leave it choose the first 4-5 lines or write a quick summary for the post in question. Trackbacks: See the definition of Trackbacks further down this document. If a blog you link to runs on old software you may have to manually give it a nod to let it know you re talking about them. This is where you fill in details of where your blog needs to handshake with the other blog. Custom Fields: For the mechanics who fiddle with Wordpress code. Here you can add additional fields to your blog post to make the blog post more interactive or have fields for search engines or aggregators. The Options Page General: Choose the name of the blog. Choose the address for updates. Date and time. Writing: How the Write Blog Post window will look. Reading: How blog posts and the front page looks for the readers. Discussion: How to control the comments on the blogs. What to allow, what not to allow. Privacy: Allow/disallow search engines. Permalinks: Instead of the title on the blog being blogname.com/?post=300 you can have blogname.com/blog-post-title-name What makes a good blog post? A good blog post must be engaging, naturally. It also must be in a conversational manner. More I than we. Never use Company Name would like to let you know about. Instead write like If you ever wanted to know how to do X then here s some advice myself and my colleagues would give to clients, we hope it is of use to you. When you write a blog post you have to keep in mind how people will find it in search engines. Will it bring in people searching for your business area from the title alone? Will a prospective

3 client feel after reading it that you are an expert and can communicate that expertise in plain plain language? If a blogger reads it will they find that it is valuable enough that they link to it from their blog or that the subject is engaging enough that they are inspired by it to write their own blog post about it and link to you? Copywriting for blogs: Titles, wording, formatting, linking Titles Tabloidesque without the sleaze. Short snappy titles that summarize what you are saying in the blog post itself. Always remember that search engines give a serious amount of weight to blog post titles. Think about your business and what searches you want to be found with. Then consider your blog post title. Examples: Broadband in Ireland: Is 3G mobile broadband worth it? We say yes New Irish Tourism Books Reviewed Top Ten Tips on how to do online PR Wording/Copywriting The body of the blog itself must not resemble a press release and even a newsletter tone can put people off. Good blog posts have an informal tone without turning into friendly banter. Write a blog post like you are writing an to a friend or peer. When starting off it is always good to introduce yourself to your potential audience and what areas of your business you are going to cover. Ideas for blog posts: Write a blog post that ties in some current event with your business. Give your take on it from your perspective. Praise the people if you think they handled such a situation correctly or say how you as a company would have dealt with the situation. If it is some complex situation act as the translator so a general audience understands it. Give free tips or advice. Example: How to write a technology story in a paper. Popular topics that engage people are lists such as Top Ten Ways to Y Topics such as If you hire us we can do Z will generally not work. Instead talk about what you do and give some information away. Taking the example of an Auctioneers: With house prices in the news of late, blog posts on reports that come out and your take and analysis of them would make a good blog post. Tips on how to make a house more sellable. How the value/price of a house is calculated. Price ranges in different areas. What an engineer should check for. How to choose an engineer. Things to look for when visiting a house that s for sale. Funny anecdotes of selling houses. A blog post linking to another blogger and their take on the property market and agree and disagree with some of their points and give your perspective.

4 Formatting While keeping the informal tone. Do not: Use wild colours. Underline words. Use ALL CAPITALS. Use Animated images. Centre the text. The Science bit: URLs, links, trackbacks, spam, what are these things? URLs: Uniform Resource Locators: The website/webpage address Links: The code that allows you to be transported to another webpage or website. The currency of the web Trackbacks: A trackback is a way of other blogs letting you know they ve linked to your blog post. It s a way of saying I like what you said/i didn t like what you said and I m linking to you as you are worth reading. A trackback is a validation from another blogger that they ve read your post and are talking about it. Modern blogging software automates trackbacks. Spam: Just like , blog spam is everywhere, with 10s of millions of comments being made my spam robots on a daily basis. For Wordpress there are many solutions. The best one is a free service called Akismet. Getting noticed: Links, comments, mail shots. The more links you have, the more Google likes you. However the general theme of the net is if you link out you almost always get a link back. The Blogroll: This is like a public list of bookmarks on your blog. Generally it is like a vote for a blog and is you telling your readers that these are other blogs/websites you think are interesting. You should create a blogroll and put your favourite blogs on them. Over time as you find more blogs, also add them. If bloggers visit you on a regular basis, add their blog too. Tip: Bloggers notice where their traffic comes from. If your audience clicks through via your blog, those bloggers will notice and will visit. They might in turn add a link to you without you having to ask. Linking in blog posts: As has been mentioned about trackbacks, linking to a blog post from your blog can automatically add a link in the comment section of the blog post you link to. This is also a nice way of saying hello to a blogger and it can also mean their readers visit you. In addition you act like a referrer to them. The blogger in question then might end up Ask! You can always just and ask for a link. I suggest only doing this for blogs that are in the same category as yourself as a food blogger might not feel right about linking to a blog about car sales etc. Comments: Find blogs in your own niche area and start reading them. Wait a while before you

5 interact. Monitor their blogging styles and how they audience interact with them. Once you understand the blogger and their style a bit, leave constructive comments. Have that blogger and audience get to know you and over time they may subscribe to you and link to you and become your audience. DO NOT leave comments asking to visit your website or comments that people suspect are only there so you can leave your calling card. Be constructive in your comment and point out where you agree or where you disagree. Mail Shots: You have an address book. Once you are up and running, all your contacts and let them know of your blog. Ask for feedback and comments on the blog itself. Do this just once. Encourage all staff to include the blog address in all their signatures. IrishBlogs.ie Planet.Journals.ie Get yourself listed on and both are visted quite a lot by people every day. Many bloggers will discover you on this and start visiting you and may eventually convert to subscribers Interacting with your new audience: How followers can build your company for free. As you build an audience and people interact with you and each other, you can use the idea of crowdsourcing where a request for information or help gets spread through the whole blogging community. Additional Social Bookmarks are ways of people to publicly bookmark your blog. Many plugins are now available for blogs to allow people to bookmark a blog post with Delicious, Google, DIGG, StumbleUpon and many more services. The advantage to this is that these people are in a way advertising your blog post to their friends/subscribers. Nosy neighbours: Who's talking about me and my blog? Statcounter allows you to monitor who comes to your blog Bloglines allows you to do vanity searches on your name and website address Technorati and Google blogsearch also offer this service You can see exactly online who is talking about you. You can then interact with these bloggers and add comments to their blog post. In addition you can monitor your competition this way or your business segment. Set up searches for Property Galway houses for sale Cork