Amy Lupold Bair - Blogging For Dummies®, 5th Edition

Blogging For Dummies, 5th Edition

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013950466

ISBN 978-1-118-71209-2 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-71182-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-71200-9 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Chapter 1

In This Chapter

Recognizing the hallmarks of a blog

Getting started with your own blog

Deciding what to blog about

Blogging successfully

B y now, you've probably heard the word blog tossed around by all kinds of people, seen it show up in news stories or cited on TV news broadcasts, or you may even have a child, friend, or coworker who has a blog. Bloggers are showing up inside businesses, and businesses are even using blogs to reach out to their customers. But what exactly do all these people mean when they say they have a blog? And what does a blog written by a teenager have in common with one written by a CEO?

Don't be too hard on yourself if you aren't exactly sure what a blog is. The word blog is actually a mash-up of two other words web and log so if it sounds made up, that's because it is. At its most basic level, a blog is a chronologically ordered series of website updates, written and organized much like a traditional diary, right down to the informal style of writing that characterizes personal communication.

In this chapter, you find out just what makes a blog bloggy and why so many people are outfitting themselves with one like it's the latest celebrity fashion trend. (Hint: It's not just that we're all narcissists!) You can get some ideas that you can use to start your own blog and become part of the blogosphere (the community of blogs and bloggers around the world).

I talk to a lot of people about blogs, many of whom know that you can find a blog on the World Wide Web, but who also have the impression that all blogs are written by navel-gazing cranks with an axe to grind or by 12-year-old girls. Some blogs really are diaries in which the blogger records the minutiae of day-to-day life but blogs can be much more than that, and all kinds of people write them.

One of my favorite blogs (see Figure ). A woman living in Chicago writes this blog, which records her thoughts and activities with such hilarious prose that I often find myself laughing out loud when I read her posts.

Figure 1-1: Mimi Smartypants blogs about her life hilariously.

Think of a blog this way: It's a kind of website. All blogs are websites (the opposite isn't true, though), and neither the content nor the creator makes a blog a blog the presentation does. A blog can be many things: a diary, a news source, a photo gallery, or even a corporate marketing tool. Blog content can include text, photos, audio, and even video, and bloggers talk about nearly any subject that you can imagine.

One of the reasons blogs have become such a popular way of publishing a website is because they're particularly good at generating high search-engine rankings. If you have a blog, it's more likely than a standard website to come up high in lists of search results for the topics you discuss. The reason? Your posts are fresh and recent. Search engines give an extra boost to web pages that have the most recently updated or created content related to the keywords that someone is searching for. And better search-engine listings mean more visitors, more readers, more comments, and a more vibrant community. Individuals and companies have taken advantage of the blog medium to reach out to web users.

How people use blogs

With millions of blogs in the world the blog search engine Technorati ( http://technorati.com ) tracks more than 1 million blogs it's obvious that blogging is a popular and successful format for publishing a website. But just what are people doing with blogs? They can't all be talking about their cats!