"Blogging Basics" Posts
Don’t know a thing about blogging but want to learn? Come here to start learning about this new medium.
All About News Feeds and Subscribing to Them
Subscribing to News Feeds
Have you ever seen icons but didn’t know what they were all about?
These point to XML (Extensible Markup Language), or special Web coding for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) that describes a new type of Web information called a “news feed.”
Essentially, these feeds contain a summary and links of any new content on a Web site or blog (or anything else a creator desires to share). A company may publish an RSS feed that contains news of its latest products, for example. When a website has an RSS feed, it is said to be “syndicated.”
Blogging Basics #5: Success Factors
Blogging should be a great experience for those people and companies. Be passionate about what you write about and be sincere about really wanting to connect and converse with your audience. What else do you need to be successful?
Be Lucky
You can work hard and have more talent than other bloggers, but luck does play a main ingredient in success. Luck can include:
- Bumping into the right people at the right time.
- Discovering and implementing best practices that actually work.
- Getting links from others blogs that led to a snowball effect of incoming links from elsewhere
- Choosing the right team for your project.
The key is to run with it and to make every lucky instance last as long as possible.
Blogging Basics #4: Paper Before Pixels
You already know that little planning goes a long way. Before making the leap into blogging, ponder these:
1. Indentify Your Strengths
What do you do best, bring that to the blog. Whether you are the manager, or the creative, or the techy, each can bring something great to the table. Whatever the talent, make your site visually stunning, easy to use, and engaging.
2. Determine What You Want to Accomplish
What is your goal? Communicating with your customers? Selling more product? Be clear on what motivates you and your company and the reasons for entering the blogsphere.
Blogging Basics #3: Stay Passionate
Hopefully what you write about in your blog is something you believe about with a whole lot of passion. But what happens if you aren’t passionate about the subject at hand? Here are some tips that can help you find your inspiration:
1. Find Your Angle
At first glance maybe a particular topic seems boring. But dig a little deeper by talking to the right people or reading an interesting book or article, you may find that there is something in their enthusiasm that sparks your imagination.
2. Choose Sides
From sport to politics, to really enjoy a subject you have to pick a side to root for. Think: Microsoft vs Apple, Red Sox vs Yankees … Find the benefits or the weaknesses, then get involved in it.
3. Humanize It
People are interested in people. Find the human angle and you might get more out of your subject area.
Blogging Basics #2: Great Design
According to Canadian researchers from Carlton University, whose study was published in the latest issue of the Behaviour and Information Technology journal:
Web designers have as little as 50 milliseconds to capture the interest of potential customers. Through the halo effect, first impressions can influence subsequent judgments of website credibility and buying decisions.
This means that Internet users can give websites a thumbs up or thumbs down in less than the blink of an eye. In just a brief one-twentieth of a second — less than half the time it takes to blink — people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an internet site.
