Blogging #1
You will create a blog with no less than ten well thought out entries. You will be responsible for creating a website, and maintaining it. Your mark will be based on the layout of your blog, and the quality of its entries.
What is blogging?
Blogging is the creation of an internet journal. Or a Web log as some might have once called it. While they have existed for well over a decade and a half, they gained popularity in the last ten years with sites such as live journal, and more recently blogger and wordpress, making the site creation and hosting a breeze.
Tell me more of this blogger.
All the sources I use for site creation, and template construction will be based towards blogger. It is a free website that makes blog updating and creating a breeze. Feel free to check it out over at http://www.blogger.com/ within a matter of minutes you can have a site up and running using one of their default templates.
What will we learn in this unit?
- What makes an interesting blog
- Engaging your audience
- Podcasting
- how to publicize your blog
- Community building
Start ‘er up!
So here you are, about to publish your voice on the internet. But wait, what exactly is your voice? And who cares what you have to say? If you look at livejournal – nobody . Nobody cares what you have to say, unless they are your friends. But lets be honest, how many times has a google search brought you up to an ol’ LJ site? Not too many.
So your mission for today – it seems simple, but I assure you it is not – will be choosing your blog topic. That’s right: good blogs need a stable topic. We’re not even going to look at content yet.
Here are the rules:
- you can not use any of the following topics
o your life
o your friend’s lives
o your cat’s life
o your [any other animal’s] life
§ unless told from the animal’s perspective. Cats still banned
o drugs, pornography, anything else that is not ‘school-appropriate’
So what are you going to do now? With all those gone, what do you do? Well here are some tips!
[source: http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingtips/tp/ChoosingBlogTopic.htm]
1. Choose a Topic You're Passionate About
A successful blog is updated frequently (often several times a day). If your blog has a chance at success, you need to keep your content fresh, which means you need to consistenly update your blog. Make sure you choose a topic for your blog that you feel strongly about and truly enjoy. Otherwise, writing about it will feel stale very quickly. You need to be able to stay motivated about your blog's topic for a long time.
2. Choose a Topic You Like to Discuss with Other People
Successful blogs require two-way conversation between you (the blogger) and your audience (your readers). As readers leave comments on your blog or email you to discuss your posts in further detail, you need to be responsive and receptive to them. Your blog's long-term success will depend on the sense of community you can create around it.
3. Choose a Topic You Don't Mind Debating with Other People
The blogoshpere is made up of people from all walks of life with varying opinions. As your blog grows, more and more people will find it, and some of those people may not agree with everything you write. Successful bloggers enoy discussing their blogs' topics from all angles and appreciate a healthy debate.
4. Choose a Topic You're Not Overly Sensitive About
As your blog grows and more people find it, many are apt to not just disagree with you, but actually disagree so strongly with you that they may attack you personally. You need to have a thick skin to deflect personal attacks and strongly opposing opinions.
5. Choose a Topic You Enjoy Researching
The blogosphere is constantly changing and one of the most unique aspects of blogs is their ability to provide fresh, meaningful content and discussions about a wide variety of topics. In order for your blog to be successful, you need to enjoy reading about your blog's topic and keeping up with news and current events related to it thereby enabling you to keep your blog's content interesting and relevant to readers.
By the end of this class you will need to have completed the following:
Blog Topic: ____________________________________________________
Detailed Explaination of what you’ll write about: ______________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
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Blog Title: _____________________________________________________
[this is important, it will show up in search engines, and needs to engage]
Post ideas: _____________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
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