2. Why Do I Need a Blog? To give your ‘fans’ a behind-the-scenes look: putting a face to a business Interactivity: the ability to communicate with your audience Educate your audience SEO Could stand in for a website
3. Blog Terms “Blog”= Web + Log RSS = Really Simple Syndication Blog vs. Post Sidebar Blogroll Categories Tags
4. The Blogosphere Before you start your blog, get familiar with the Blogosphere Who’s out there What they’re writing about Do a google search for blogs in your area of interest Get a Blog reader account and subscribe to some interesting ones Comment
6. Starting a Blog From your Blogosphere homework: Who’s your audience? What’s your topic? What do want it to look like? Is my topic niched enough to garner an audience, but wide enough so that I don’t run out of stuff to write about? Time
7. Blog Elements Minimum: About Page with Photo Links to your website & social networking sites Comments enabled A system for classifying posts Bonus stuff: Blogroll Photos, videos, audio Polls, quizzes, giveaways
8. Best Practices 2-5 times per week Post on consistent days to build audience (Tues-Thurs highest traffic) Keep it short: 200-500 words Tweet each post Run through FB using Networked Blogs Create a blogging schedule and book the time
9. Garnering a Readership Make it searchable: Keywords Technorati/Feedburner Make it stupid easy for people to subscribe Read and post comments on other’s blogs (bread crumbs) Signature: outgoing email Business cards Mass email Connect to all your social networking Buy ads Be topical
10. Keeping Your Sanity Keep an ‘inspiration list’ Podcast, Vlog, Photoblog Guest Posts/ co-posts/ Interviews Spread the love Read other blogs for inspiration Take breaks Set aside time each week to blog Use your “blogger brain”
