Are You A Blogger Yet?

Here's my thoughts on blogs and blogging.

Blogs are easy to create, easy to maintain and fun to read. While some CMS (Customer Management System) programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface where you can work in an easy and to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available.

Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone "weblog client" software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time. In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write,and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.

Blog

Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. Blogs are frequently updated web pages on which authors post short comments about news items, interesting websites, their thoughts and more. Blogs are part of a nanopublishing revolution that allows individuals to express themselves to the world.

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common: A main content area with articles listed chronologically with the newest on top. A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll". Some blogs may have additional features beyond these. Some blogs even have multiple authors, with his or her own articles.

Micro-Blogging

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. Recently, however, many new services, with the same feature of micro-blogging are being born. Digg founder Kevin Rose, together with three other developers, recently launched a service called Pownce, which integrates micro-blogging with file-sharing and event invitations. A Norwegian developer has also launched a service called Folkstr, which integrates micro-blogging with social networking. The popular social networking websites Facebook and MySpace also have a micro-blogging feature, called "status update".

Comments

Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs. The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A's and Person B's readers can follow links to the other's post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog.

Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the different article posts, and can help in tackling comment spam. It lets you moderate comments, & you can delete unwanted comments, approve cool comments and make other decisions about the comments. Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. Blogs can be good reading (don't forget to read the comments). There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog. This is also a good way for people to leave comments about the articles.

This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool. Many of us who blog, write for multiple sites, either for blogs that we own, for blogging networks, or for a combination of the two.

In Conclusion

Adding quality links to your site adds value for your reader as well as giving you clout in the blogging community surrounding your topic. It's handy to keep a blogging notebook or a blogging calendar to track what you've done and said as well as notes for future blogs. Download your blogging video tutorial today and save yourself lots of headaches and precious time.



Rod Jellison is a semi-retired tax accountant that has more than 30 years of self-employment under his belt. He has shared his experience and insight through seminars, classrooms and one on one instruction. His love of being an entrepreneur is his motivation. http://www.decoupageandpapertole.com. Get your backlinks indexed with Pingback Optimizer.