What is a blog?
Blogs, or Web logs, are online journals that are updated frequently, sometimes even daily. An update, (also called an entry or a post) is usually quite short, perhaps just a few sentences, and readers can often respond to an entry online. People who write blogs are commonly called bloggers. Bloggers, tongue in cheek, call themselves and their blogs the blogosphere.http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/writing-a-good-blog.html
The difference between a blog and a website
Public?
Decide on a topic
Personal profile
Viewing Unitarian blogs
What do people like about some of these blogs?
- Snappy title
- A title that is understood and if not, an accessible explanation for the title
- Visually attractive, not too busy, no strong image under the writing, not to detract from the writing. If images attached to posts they should be attractive - copyright-free from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and http://creativecommons.org/
- Style - not too much jargon and complex language, accessible style. An open and honest approach, not being too dogmatic.
- Short pieces like poems which invite the reader to think.
What people don’t like
- To many visuals, too busy, image beneath the text
- Posts are too long
- Too many bees in their bonnets
- Too much political and religious ranting
- Overly complex language, jargon and abbreviations that are not common (OK to use common abbreviations like OK and BBC)
- Too long - not the place for sermons - consider setting up a personal website
Issues
- Confidentiality, writing about other people
- Archiving blogs which are not being added to
For own blog
- Who is the audience?
- What do they want to know/what do you want to tell them? Information? Advice? Personal stories?
- How do they want this - words, pictures, podcasts, video?
- How often will you blog? Once a week? Once a month?
- How long will each post be?
- Will you allow comments and will you respond to these?
Blog and blogposts
- Your blog will have a title
- Each post will have a title - titles should offer a benefit, promise news or arouse curiosity.
- Do not have long, dense paragraphs
- Perhaps have sub-headings?
- Bulleted lists
- Can use contractions like don’t and can’t - this is not an English exam
- Have an easy style
- Use the word ‘you’ rather than ‘we’
- Explore different blog hosting services
Setting up a blog
- Google account. To get to your blog sign into your Google account, search fro blogger and your sites will become visible.
- Privacy setting
- Lay-out, including gadgets
- Design
- Adding content - need to save it but until it is published it will not be viewed
- Copyright issues
- Links - use a gadget
- Polls - use a gadget
- Email new post alert - gadget
- Time zone - language and formatting under Settings
- Can write a post and set the time and date when it will be published
- Labels for pages - determine which labels you want and list them under post settings
Promoting your blog
- Linking to other sites e.g. UCCN, local congregation, districts
- Asking sites to link to your blog - as above
- Facebook and Twitter - can link via Blogger
