Blog Marketing

A blog (a portmanteau made by contracting the phrase "web log") is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. Like other media, blogs often focus on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news. Some blogs function as online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Blogging is popular
It has been said that "blogging" started as a new trend in 2004. Everyday more and more internet users log onto the internet in search of good, solid information they can use. And they want it for FREE. Blogging is an easy and effective way to provide it while expanding your customer base seamlessly and getting targeted traffic funneled to your online business.

Blogging is easy
Ever kept a personal journal at one point in your life? Or had to keep one for an English class? If so, you already know how to blog! This could be one of the main reasons for their skyrocketing popularity, the fact that ANYONE can create a blog. All you need is something to write about, which is entirely up to you! Plus web-based blogging is SO EASY you will be shocked by its simplicity! Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software on regular web hosting services

Blogging is versatile
Either personal or business blogs can be run many different ways and contain every topic imaginable. You can create a members only blog, free public blog, a blog based solely on your opinions, or a fact based blog. The only limits placed on blogging are by your imagination!

Blog basics

The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts" or "entries". A person who posts these entries is called a "blogger".

A blog entry typically consists of the following:

• Title - main title, or headline, of the post.

• Body - main content of the post. Blogs use a conversational style of documentation.

• Permalink - the URL of the full, individual article.

• Post Date - date and time the post was published.

A blog entry optionally includes the following:

• Comments - comments added by readers

• Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses

• Trackback - links to other sites that refer to the entry

A blog site typically contains a list of links, or blogroll, of other blogs that the blog author reads or affiliates with.

How blogs differ from traditional sites

A blog has certain attributes that distinguish it from a standard web page. It allows for easy creation of new pages: new data are entered into a simple form (usually with the title, the category, and the body of the article) and then submitted. Automated templates take care of adding the article to the home page, creating the new full article page (Permalink), and adding the article to the appropriate date- or category-based archive. It allows for easy filtering of content for various presentations: by date, category, author, or other attributes. It allows the administrator to invite and add other authors, whose permission and access are easily managed.

Difference from forums or newsgroups

Blogs are different from forums or newsgroups. Only the author or authoring group can create new subjects for discussion on a blog. A network of blogs can function like a forum in that every entity in the blog network can create subjects of their class. Such networks require interlinking to function, so a group blog with multiple people holding posting rights is now becoming more common. Even where others post to a blog, the blog owners or editors will initiate and frame discussion, manipulating the situation to their specifications.

Blog Popularity Dynamics

Recently, scientists have analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations (i.e. permalinks), as well as popularity through affiliation (i.e. blogrolls). The basic conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that while in order for a blog to become popular through blogrolls takes a fair amount of time, permalinks can accumulate more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative of popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people are actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases.

Blogging Search Engines

• Google Blog Search allows searching of multiple blog sites. Including Blogger, Live Journal and many others. http://www.google.com/blogsearch

• Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on web logs all over the internet. Currently tracking 30.4 million sites and 2.1 billion links. http://www.technorati.com

• Bloglines allows users to create RSS subscriptions to blogs and publish their  blogroll on their own sites.

• Feedster is another popular blog search engine.

RSS

RSS ("Really Simple Syndication" or “Rich Site Summary”) has three distinct advantages over Web browsing and e-mail, the two most popular ways to read news online:

• No ads or graphics clutter the headlines and article summaries. True, most news sites make you click through to the full Web page to read the whole story, but scanning an RSS reader is still more efficient than looking at, say, the front page of the New York Times online. And bloggers, who don't depend on ads for survival, usually stuff their entire posts into RSS.

• An RSS reader automatically updates itself with the latest items from the sites you tell it to watch, so it's always fresh. You don't have to hop from site to site, or constantly click "refresh," to know what's been published by the sites you frequent most.

• You can include customized RSS "feeds" that cull material from multiple news sources into a single data stream. For example, Excel in MLM provides an RSS feed on his blog to funnel information to members and other RSS-using supporters.

How do you get started with RSS?

The first step is to install an RSS reader (also known, somewhat clumsily, as an "RSS aggregator"). There are many, almost all of the free.

Feedreader is a free lightweight aggregator that supports RSS and ATOM formats. It works under Windows 95 and later versions. (www.feedreader.com),

SharpReader is an RSS/Atom Aggregator for Windows (www.sharpreader.com).

Once you've installed a reader, go back to your browser and open your favorite site. Most sites have a link that says "RSS" or an orange button that says "XML." Some sites have multiple links, one for each section of the publication. Cut and paste these URLs into your reader to read the site in RSS.

Download FREE eBooks on Blogging and RSS:

Easy RSS and Blogging

RSS made Easy

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