Learning About Blogging and How to Blog

Blogging has entered a realm of its own, from fad to industry. People are entering the blogosphere daily, thousands every day. I’ve been blogging for over 10 years and had no clue I was doing it. It was called “online journaling” and some called it “web diaries” or “blithering idiots writing on the Internet”. I tried not to blither, but I just did what I knew and now am known for what I did and continue to do: blog.

The evolution from website to blog changes how people communicate. Let’s look at some of the development of blogs and help you learn more about blogging and how to blog.
What’s The Difference Between a Website and a Blog

A website is a collection of web pages on a server. It is a form of static billboard on the Internet that showcases information. There is more to the definition, but for our needs, this is good enough. A website can be a collection of articles, news, links, information, photographs, and anything you want. And a website can even host a blog!

A blog is a website or part of a website that usually features one or more of the following criteria:

* Editorial Commentary
* Links to external sites, often seen as recommendations
* May, or may not, be factual
* Tells stories
* Usually about a specific topic, subject, or genre
* Tends to be opinionated and personal
* Could be considered “newsy” rather than “news”
* Comments and interaction with the audience
* Photographs of you and your activities

At one time, a blog would have been called a diary, journal, scrapbook, or storytelling. Which brings us back to the term website.

Many people differentiate a blog from a website. A website is “serious information”, while a blog is “not so serious”. A website has facts, figures, articles, and educational materials. A blog has a bunch of links, talk and comments, as well as facts, figures, articles, and educational materials.

Truth is, a blog is a website, but the terminology is changing to differentiate between a non- or semi-interactive website and the magic that compels thought and interaction with a blog.
Blogging Programs, Tools, and Platforms

The software that drives the different web elements also feature different names like blogging programs, blogging tools, blogging platforms, and blogging services. For the most part, they are all the same thing.

Graphic of dynamic web page generationIn the past, websites were created with static code that displayed the content and design elements to make it look pretty. With the development of CMS (Content Management Systems) and blogging programs like WordPress, a powerful blogging tool with massive plugins and add-ons, as well as flexibility to also be a CMS, the line is being crossed between websites and blogs.

Blogs are usually run by blogging tools or programs on the web which input information you supply through the blog interface, on WordPress known as the Administration Panels, into a database. The program and WordPress Themes (blog designs) send commands to the database to collecting information and publish it as web pages on your site. Depending upon those commands, each page viewed on your blog may look different or have different content. Thus, blogs are often referred to as dynamic content generators compared to the old static content websites.

Basically, a blogging program like WordPress, or its free hosting blog service, WordPress.com, makes it simple and easy to write articles and posts on your blog and does all the work for you. All you do is just blog.

So, why should you consider blogging?
Blogging for Fun, Education, and Publicity

When we hit the hit the road full-time ten years ago, we had a static website with information about our travels, some articles, our itinerary, and contact information. We also had an emailed “journal” that went out to friends, family, and fans all over the world who wanted to be kept up-to-date on our adventures. Over time, we added some of these journals to our website.

Little did we realize that we were blogging. We were telling stories about our life, lessons, and experiences of living on the road, traveling around in our 30 foot trailer across North America, and eventually to Europe and the Middle East, then back to the United States in time for the year of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.

Telling these kinds of stories is fun. Life on the road can be fun, and cruel, and there is some perversive pleasure about sharing your woes with others. Friends and family may be geographically distant, but “hearing” the sound of their voice through the words on the screen brings people closer together. It also makes new friends. Many of our fans wrote to us and invited us to stay as we passed through their area. We did and discovered wonderful people and great locations we would have missed if we’d stuck to our own agenda.

Blogging about your life can be fun, but it is now used for many other purposes.
Blogs Offer News, Gossip, Life Stories, and an Education

Blogs are now carrying breaking news, gossip, and little tidbits that intrigues the media. In fact, many news rooms now monitor blogs, and even feature their own blogs, sharing information about the news and the stories behind the news, attracting a new audience.

A lot of blogs help inform and educate the public, from reporting on changes and attempts to change the laws of the government to reporting upon the impact of government decisions.

People around the world who were once repressed with a lack of free speech are risking their lives to blog about the continued repression and political unrest. Blogs are giving people a voice they never had before.

Teachers, artists, writers, counselors, lawyers, doctors, many different education-oriented jobs are now blogging about their experience and the lessons they’ve learned to help others learn from them. There is more educational material than ever before available in the world because of this eagerness to share through blogging.

Boeing has blogs. Intel has blogs. Microsoft has blogs. It seems like every major corporation now has blogs. The corporate blog does two very important things.

First, it puts a human face on the corporation, helping people understand a little more about the day to day struggles and wins a company faces within their industry. Second, and more importantly, it promotes the business. Many people believe that blogs are the changing face of public relations and advertising today.

Is blogging for you? Depends upon what you want to do. If you have “static” information and articles and you just want to put the information out there and let it sit, then a general website will work for you. But if you crave interaction and you want to contribute to your efforts on a regular basis, then consider blogging.
Blogging Tips

If you decide you want to jump into all the fuss and start blogging yourself, or suddenly realize, like I did, that you’ve been blogging all along and now what to be known as a “blogger”, then here are some tips that may help.
Make a Blog Plan

What are you going to write about? Or do you only want to show off your photographs? Or show them off and talk about them? Do you want to write about a lot of topics or just a specific topic or genre?

I recommend you narrow your interest down to a specific topic rather than rambling all over the place.

Our website, Taking Your Camera on the Road, has a wide range of information covering over 12 years of “blogging”. Everything revolves around the issue of travel and photography as we take our camera on the road.

Still, it was too much information so I broke off the web and blogging technology articles into this blog, Lorelle on WordPress, genelogy research into Lorelle’s Family History Blog, my husband’s aeronautical engineering business into Brent VanFossen with a View, along with other blogs that cover specific aspects of our work and interests.

With a specific topic or subject in mind, plan how you will deliver that information. This is not about how often you post to your blog, but about WHAT you post to your blog. Will you only post links and a few comments to guide people to related information or information of interest? Or will you actually write and explain topics, like articles? Or a combination? Or just deal with photographs creating a photoblog? What information will you present and how will you present it.
Choosing a Blog Look

Choose a Theme or style for your blog that represents the “tone” of your subject.

If you are writing about you and your life, then make the site reflect your personality. If you will be writing about the US government and uncovering their attacks on our personal freedom, well, then your site should look appropriate for that subject.

Remember, the look of your blog tells people more about the content within than the content. It’s the FIRST thing they see when they walk in your virtual door.
Start Blogging by Writing

Once you are set up with a look and a plan – get to work. Look at your plan and start setting up a calendar of subjects to cover over the next month, two months, six months, year, or more.

You might want to just blog whatever happens to you in the day, but a successful blog needs direction and clarity. Your readers like familiar and consistent content, with few surprises or changes. So make a plan for what you want to write about and start writing.

Article series of post linksWhatever your schedule or method, give yourself some deadlines and goals to keep yourself active on your blog. I like ongoing series of articles and topics on my site that I think of as “projects”. A month long series called Know Before You Go on what you should know before you go on the road, was very successful on Taking Your Camera on the Road. Other successful series, covering a few days or a whole month included a month long series featuring WordPress Plugins, content theft and copyright violations for bloggers, WordPress.com Blog Bling for WordPress.com bloggers facing limits on what they can do with their free blogs, the popular One Year Anniversary Blog Self-Review, a 30 day series honoring the one year anniversary of this blog and WordPress.com, and the successful Web Browser Guide for Bloggers on the Blog Herald.

Writing article series on your blog gives readers something to write about, build a body of work, but also provide other bloggers a reason to link to your blog, generating interest and attracting new readers.

I believe that article series, editorial calendars, content planning, and other self-assignments helps the blogger stay on track and focused, as well as helps with posting content to the blog on a regular schedule.

If you get busy with the rest of your life and a month or two goes by without a new piece of news, please don’t tell us you apologize for ignoring us. Tell us what you’ve been doing and make the post interesting. As much as you may think we care, we’re just interested in more information. Keep the info coming. The audience needs to be fed.
Attracting a Blog Audience: Generating Traffic

There are a lot of tricks and gimmicks out there that people promise will increase your blog traffic. The majority of these are worthless.

Using gimmicks and tricks to build traffic, tweak your search engine optimization, and force your PageRank with Google have all been done before. While they might work in the short term, they never work in the long term.

There are only two things that work to build an audience on your blog:

1. Create Content Worth Reading
2. Create Content Worth Linking To

By creating content worth reading, you will slowly in time build up readers. People will search for the keywords and search terms you use in your post title and content and come visiting to see if you have the information they need.

If you do, you have a happy customer and potentially a return customer.

Make them really happy, they may talk about you on their blog.

When you create content worth linking to, you call into action the oldest advertising method in the history of the planet: word of mouth.

Blogs are fueled by who said what about who or what of interest to the author. They tell others and their readers follow, bringing them to you.

Blogging is a weird duck business. What other business in the world would you get more business by telling your customers to leave your store for something better, only to have them come back happy and telling and bringing their friends back with them? It’s amazing!

Special Tip: Just as you probably hate having surprise guests to your home when the house is a mess, make sure your blog is in place, filled with lovely content and furnishings, before you start welcoming guests to your blog home.
Be You

The best tip anyone can give you about blogging and creating a successful blog is to be you.

The best bloggers become the best bloggers because they are who they blog. They are fascinated by their blogging subject, rarely covering other distractions. They blog their passion and you feel it, you know it, it shows all over their blog.

People are attracted to positive energy. Create a blog filled with good content, positive perspectives, and meaningful content and you will attract readers. People want friends who are like them, but who also challenge them to be more. Turn your readers into friends and you build a loyal audience.

The more honest you are with your readers, the more your personality glows through the writing, the more you are willing to just be you, the expert, the person who knows or wants to know more, the more likely you are to build a steady readership.

When I was growing up, we were entertained on television by J.P. Patches, a wonderful clown who lived in the town dump in a shack and whose best friend, Gertrude. We were sure Gertrude was a guy but it didn’t matter. He was a girl with a mop on his head for hair and we loved her. J.P. was successful because he welcomed you into his humble home and shared his stories with you. You felt like he was talking just to you, and only you. You wanted to be like him, and other times, you learned from him because of his mistakes – not wanting to be like him. And yet you loved him, his simple life, his silly and corny jokes, and the adventures he and Gertude would stumble into around the town dump.

We all have that person in our life that was friend and mentor. Bloggers are also friends and mentors to many, so be the one that your readers trust for the information they need, and learn from each other along the way. Be a blogging friend and your world will grow with more friends than you know what to do with.

Don’t fake it, force it, or trick it into happening. It happens because you are simply you, the blogger, sharing your knowledge and experiences with others.

You can tell when a blogger is faking it. So can your readers.

And just keep blogging. Keep writing. Stay focused. And blog “you”.