Blogging On A Social Network
Affiliate Marketing And Blogging
Are You Video Blogging Your Customers
Mobile Blogging is the Cutting Edge
Blogging For Business Owners
Blogging For Profit
The word “blog” is short for the word “weblog”. A weblog is a word that was coined early in the internet age to describe an online journal or diary type page chiefly comprising of information, individual opinions, observations and reflections. It is mostly updated regularly and can range in subject matter from the mundane to the thought provoking. A blog has the capacity to be a very personal site for writers looking to express their deepest private thoughts or can be very general.
Hopefully when someone utters the words "what does blog stand for", you will be able to come to the rescue. This really is a reflection of the incredible communication power of the World Wide Web. The word "blog" can certainly be used as a noun to refer to the web log itself. It is also on the other hand a verb, denoting the act of contributing to a blog.
Once you are able to create a blog, it is fairly simple to duplicate the process. There are a number of blogging softwares that are free to use. Wordpress is one of the most popular. It is free to setup and you can use many different layouts (also known as themes). Wordpress is search engine friendly and quite easy to implement. If you are thinking of setting up a blog, first thing you will need to do is to decide on a name for your blog, preferably a name associated to the subject of the blog. Once you decide on a name, you will need to register the blogs domain name with a domain provider.
These websites offer facilities, so you can immediately check to see if the domain name you wish to use is available. If it's not, you will have to try alternative names. Any person that has ever put pen to paper, or even had an opinion in their head, can, and should, create a blog. Blogs are the perfect medium for just about any notion ever expressed. Be it clever or idiotic. Blogs are free expression on adrenaline. Where else is it possible to share your views on topics ranging from civil liberties to civil war?
Blogs are indeed the essence of the internet, they provide a waiting audience for what ever you wish to share with the world. Actually i will go as far as saying, it's akin to an electronic soap box. Blogger, which happens to be run by google, has made it very easy to create a blog with less than 10 clicks of your mouse. When you create a blog, companies are more than pleased to shell out a commission for customers that you drive to their web site. The process is very straight forward. With MediaNetads, you agree to put advertisements on your blog, and when someone clicks on that advertisement you simply earn yourself a commission.
Blog Indexing Blog indexing simply means that blogs are listing on cross Internet searches and search engine sites. These are special sites that lists blogs and makes them easy to find for readers. Blog exposure is valuable and one way to get this kind of exposure is through blog indexing. Readers can find a blog about almost any subject in the world and in any language. A blog directory helps readers find what kind of blog they are largely interested in reading.
A number of blog indexing sites list several different topics to pick from and then list blogs that relate to an individual topic. The increased exposure to a blog site is indeed great news for bloggers.Blog indexing can also include indexing your blog pages within your site. Whenever you add an entry to your blog, it will be included with a link on your site. Keeping these links can help readers go back and read your past entries. When you do include certain keywords within your blog writing, a search engine can also pull up your past blog entries.
Keyword trackers are ideal for those who need to know what keywords people are using to locate a blog. This is quite essential for businesses that need to connect with potential consumers. Being in possession of a good keyword tracker can also help you organize your blog site to determine which keywords are most popular with readers. It can also help get your site listed on search engines. Keyword trackers can be downloaded for free in many instances. A visitor tracker can be beneficial in helping you see where your visitors are coming from.
Advertising Techniques: The media is a powerful thing -- on average, a person spends a huge amount of their life consuming it in one shape or form , and will exhaust a significant percentage of that time looking at, listening to or watching advertisements. If you intend to use the power of the media, though, you need to simply know what you're doing. Advertising in Newspapers and Magazines. There are two kinds of advertising you can get in newspapers and magazines: classified and display. Classifieds are the small ads towards the back of the publication, while display ads can be almost any size, from a small corner of a page to a massive double-page spread. If there's a particular publication you're interested in advertising in, either go to its website (the rate card section) or call its advertising department to find out the rates it charges. Be prepared to be shocked. Yes, advertising in the print media really is that expensive, and for most home businesses it probably just won't be that economical. However, there is an exception: niche and trade magazines. It is quite incredible just how many magazines there are out there, filling every conceivable gap in the market. Read more...
As soon as a visitor enters your blog site, their information is saved onto the visitor tracker. In your own time, you can log in and see exactly who your visitors are. You are not only able to see the statistics on your readers, but you can also see reports for current visitors and those that have visited the site previously. Another way that a blog writer is able to keep track of their readers is to include a comment section at the end of your blog page.
Not every visitor will want to leave a comment, but this is a useful way to gain feedback about your site. You will also better understand the type of readers that frequent your site, but also understand the kind of content that they would like to read.
A Bit Of History The technology for blogging was accessible to the public in the beginning of the 1990's but was pretty much limited to small groups of widely divided people. A small amount of people on the Internet began posting regular journal entries on the Web. At that time, there wasn't a name for what they were actually doing. In December 1997, Jorn Barger coined the word "weblog." It was used until 1999 when web blogger Peter Merholz contracted the words and fashioned the term "blog".
Effects There has been a dramatic trend in the popularity of blogs. In 1998, websites began appearing, allowing any Internet user to start their own blog. Within a few years the number of bloggers went from a several thousands to several millions. Blogging became so widely used that it altered the mass media.
Any individual with a PC or a smart phone with an Internet connection, could instantly post her thoughts and have it read by a great amount of people around the world. The main media quickly realized the power of blogging. Effectively every newspaper, magazine, radio and TV station had a companion website and blog for cross marketing purposes.
We Are Helping 1000 Businesses Amplify Their Online Presence
Identification Businesses and politicians quickly jumped on the bandwaggon to exploit the use of blogs to raise their profiles. Blogs are a way for consumers and voters to have semi-direct interaction with the maker of a product or their political representative. This interaction takes the form of questions posted by the public and responses posted by the business or politician. This type of interaction benefits both parties by providing feedback in both direction in a way that never existed before blogs.
Blogs are similar to regular websites, but they add interactive functionality like the ability for readers to post comments on the blog pages (or “posts”, as they’re known). Another unique feature of blogs is how they emphasize syndicated content by making what are called “feeds” available. A feed is basically a way to provide the user with frequently updated content. RSS(Really simple syndication) is one of the most popular feeds. RSS allows users to enter a page’s feed URL into a feed aggregator, which allows them to check newly posted content on multiple websites simultaneously.
Organizational and Corporate blogs A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to bring members and other interested parties up to date with club activities.
By Genre There are blogs that focus on a specific subject, such as political blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), house blogs, fashion blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, and legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs) or dreamlogs. Two common types of genre blogs are music blogs and art blogs. A mum blog is the term featuring discussions especially about home and family. A Splog, whilst not a legitimate type of blog, has a sole purpose of spamming.
Media type A blog consisting of videos is called a vlog, one consisting of links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs.
Device Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. One early blog was a Wearable Wireless Webcam, which was an online shared diary of a person's personal life, with a combination of text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and an EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance.
Community and cataloging
The Blogosphere The collective community of all blogs is commonly reffered to as the blogosphere. Since by definition all blogs are on the internet, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (trackbacks or pingbacks) and backlinks. Discussions "in the blogosphere" are occasionally used by the media as a barometer of public opinion on various issues. Since new, untapped communities of bloggers can emerge in no time, Internet marketers pay close attention to "trends in the blogosphere".
Blog search engines Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati. Technorati, which is among the most popular of the blog search engines, does provide current information on both popular searches and tags used to classify blog postings. The work of the research community is on going beyond basic keyword search, by inventing novel ways to navigate through massive amounts of information that is present in the blogosphere.
5 ways to increase traffic to your blog Blogs continue to be an incredibly popular way of promoting your product or service. They are quite straight forward to install, easy to update and administer. And the great news is search engines love them too. But what is a blog without traffic? Here are five quick ways to boost traffic to your blog.
1.Build a list of blog services to ping There are a lot of blog services you can ping. This simply means that you notify this service, that you've updated your blog. These services then will list your new posts and you get the traffic from them. Go to your search box and type blog services. These list are also available if you search google or any other search engine for it. That should be adequate to provide an initial boost to your traffic.
2.Add buttons to popular news readers What does this mean? Well there are sites like yahoo or google or bloglines, which have a members area where you can choose sites with RSS feeds to fetch the latest updates from different blogs. That way you can have the most recent updates from let's say 50 blogs listed on one page. Users can then easily add your blog to their news reader members area.
3.Update your content regulary Search engines and blog services love regular updates. It's very likely that you will get targeted traffic from search engines if you post regulary. This simply means you ought to make a new post to your blog at least once per day. A note of caution though, too many updates per day can harm your search engines position and hits. What's too many? 10 or more.
4.Post in forums Post in forums, but don't spam them. You will need to post something fresh, relevant and interesting, not forgetting to put a link to your blog in your signature. Don't just post in any forum. For example if you're selling cds, post in forums that are about music and cds. Don't post in motor cycle forums if you're selling furniture. By posting in forums, you will get one-way links which are good for search engine position in search engines like google, bing (formerly MSN) or yahoo.
5.Submit to blog search engines There are countless numbers of search engines available, that list only blogs. Just google for „blog search engines“ and you should find at least 20 of them. These blog search engines will assist you with targeted traffic. It is important to write a good title and description to your blog, so that people without difficulty will find it and click on your link. Simply follow these 5 steps and you will start seeing lots of traffic to your blog. And don't forget to update your blog with fresh content.
Blogging can result in a range of legal liabilities and other unforeseen consequences.
Defamation or liability Kareem Amer,a blogger from Egypt, was charged with insulting the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and an Islamic establishment through his blog. It is the first time in the history of Egypt that a blogger was prosecuted. After a brief trial session that took place in Alexandria, the blogger was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting former President, Mubarak. Another Egyptian blogger, Abdel Monem Mahmoud was arrested in April 2007 for anti-government writings in his blog. Monem is a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
Jan Pronk,after expressing opinions in his personal blog about the state of the Sudanese armed forces,the United Nations Special Representative for the Sudan, was given three days notice to leave Sudan. The Sudanese army had simply had enough of him and promptly demanded his deportation.
In 2008, Burmese blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was sentenced in Myanmar to 20 years and six months in jail for posting a cartoon critical of head of state Than Shwe and also for expressing his opinions on his blog. On 20 February 2009, a court in Rangoon reduced his prison term by eight and a half years, leaving him to serve 12 years.
Blog Pioneers In October 1998, Bruce Ableson, launched Open Diary, which soon grew to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader to comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries. In March 1999,Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal. In July 1999, Andrew Smales, created Pitas.com as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a Website, followed by Diaryland in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.
Meg Hourihan and Evan Williams (Co founders of Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003). In October 2008, Evan Williams became the CEO of Twitter. Hopefully the question of what does blog stand for has been answered to your satisfaction. We know your time is valuable and we thank you for spending it with us. Hope you found the information you were looking for.
Charles Friedo Frize Founder/CEO FrizeMedia
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