Blogging 101 : Get Started Blogging

Published by AYN Brand | Filed under Internet Marketing, Public Relations, Strategies |

Wondering whether you should start a blog? Ask yourself the following:

• Do you want to regularly distribute information, news, and event notices about and relevant to your organization?
• Do you want to engage new audiences and activate current members/constituents in your organization and its mission by developing a compelling narrative and encouraging their comments and feedback?
• Do you want to recruit volunteers and cultivate donors by sharing current events, tracking issues, and making calls to action that motivate them?
• Do you want to be able to respond immediately to urgent setbacks, needs, and crises with emergency contact information and resources?
• Do you want to reach out to people outside of your immediate geographical area?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, then a blog may be right for you and/or your organization. Blogs enable you to easily share and update information with a broad audience, as well as develop conversations and relationships with your readers.

FIRST: Familiarize yourself with the components of a blog (thanks to Anton Zuiker for this summary):

• Date header: The date the post is written. Posts are generally presented in reverse chronological order (most recent first).
• Title: Each post is given a title. This is a pithy phrase, a pun, or even a series of symbols.
• Time stamp and/or permalink: The time the post is uploaded to the blog. The time stamp often is a link to a permanent page just for this post. This allows other bloggers to link to a post.
• Post: A word, sentence, paragraph or essay, with links and names and current news. Key words and names are often highlighted in boldface, which makes the post ’scannable’ (the usability gurus at Useit.com tell us that online readers don’t read - they scan a page).
• Author nickname: The name or nickname of the person who wrote the post. For blogs written by one person, the author is often left off (because the author identification can be found in an About page). For collaborative blogs, the author helps to differentiate contributors. The nickname can also be a link to a page of all the author’s posts.
• Category: Individual postings are often labeled as part of a category.
• Comments: A software feature that allows readers to leave their own comments and reactions to the author’s post.
• TrackBack: A way for one blog post to link to the post of another blog. In other words, one blogger can write about the content of another person’s weblog, and the two posts are linked in a web. See the Beginner’s Guide to TrackBack.

SECOND: Follow these 8 Easy Steps to Start a Blog …