American and International Info Resources

Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online discussion list, more dynamic than older-style home pages. They are more personal than traditional journalism, and definitely more public than diaries. A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person’s life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

Blogs enable interaction and invite others to reward a person’s creative effort with feedback. They weave new social networks, introducing people with common passions. Another reason why one should start blogging is dissemination of “micro-opinions” important to a small audience - opinions that would never make it in newspapers.

Weblogs, definitely, are the mavericks of the online world. Two of its greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media.

The XHTML family can accommodate extensions through XHTML modules and techniques to develop new XHTML-conforming modules. These modules permit the combination of existing and new feature sets when developing content and when designing new user agents.

With so many different ways to access the Internet, the XHTML family is designed keeping in mind the general user agent interoperability. Through document profiling mechanism, servers, proxies, and user agents are able to create best effort content transformation. This language is both RSS and XML conforming. The content can be readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools. XHTML documents can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and applets) that rely upon either the HTML Document Object Model or the XML Document Object Model.

InstaBlog
http://instablog.hit.bg/

InstaBlog appeared as a result of two things: responding to the simplest possible way to maintain a weblog, and trying out the extremely cool Perl MSN IM client. InstaBlog functions in the following manner: it is run as a background process on a machine with Internet access. With its own Passport identification it is constantly logged into the MSN instant messenger service.

OpenJournal
http://www.grohol.com/downloads/oj/

OpenJournal is a completely Web-based interface. The software’s features include: automated file creation; automated index updating; editing of all files through a Web-based interface; entries with or without titles and time posted; automated archiving based on a weekly or monthly format. All done through ordinary text files and no additional perl modules are needed to run it. Basically, the software allows the users to keep an online journal, customize and configure it. All needed to do after installation is to write in it from time to time.

BlogBack
http://www.tecknik.net/blogback/
Comment system that does not require server installation.

Enetation
http://www.enetation.co.uk/index.php?
Free hosted commenting system

BloggerBot
http://www.fibiger.org/bloggerbot/
AIM client for Blogger.

dotcomments
http://www.foreword.net/
Free PHP-based comment system for use on Blogger-backed and other weblogs.

Christos Varsamis is an internet marketing consultant and the publisher of http://www.Internetmarketingsuccesstips.com & http://www.settinglifegoals.com.

If you want to build a successful blog, there are three main things that can certainly help you get started. Although many people think that building a successful blog is one of the easiest tasks out there, they are wrong. A successful blog takes more than just setting up a blog page to chat about your life. You need to focus on these three building blocks in order to even have the framework for a successful blog. Even these three building blocks are not enough however to make your blog successful. Read on to learn exactly what you need to make your blog as successful as possible.

The Look

The first building block for a successful blog is The Look. What this means is that your blog should start with an appropriate style. You can begin when you first start your blog. Many blogging software programs will help you out with the style of your blog. If you are using a blogging program that caters most to beginners, you will see that it will offer different templates for you to choose. There will be something for everyone. You can go through the templates to choose which colors you like best for the layout. Experiment with the layouts to see which templates look best on the computer screen. You can always go back and change the template later if you want to change the look of your blog. Make sure that if you are creating your own blog, without using a pre-created template that you make it look as professional as possible. You can even hire a professional to do the job for you if you wish. The more professional your blog looks, the more seriously your readers will take your posts.

The Content

The content of your blog is the second key building block you will need for a successful blog. While you can choose to create posts that have no direction or purpose, you will find that when you post interesting commentary or short information filled articles that your traffic will increase. Although you may think it is interesting, most readers will not enjoy reading about your day to day activities, unless you make them into humorous stories.

It should also be noted that the more content you have on your site, the more successful your site will be. It is basically a numbers game at this point. The more you post, the more chances you will have the one of your posts will attract the eye of someone searching for a related topic.

The Ads

The third building block is advertising. Bloggers can make a steady income using advertising on their blogs. The trick is to have a good mixture of ads and content however. If you fill your blog with ads and have no content for readers, they will be distracted and not visit your site again. A good rule to remember is that you should never have more than two or three ads per blog page. This is an important rule to remember. You should not overwhelm you readers with ads. You should only present them so that the readers can further explore them if they wish. Don’t use flashing ads or other bold ads that will annoy your readers. Choosing the right type of advertising program is part of it as well. Look into an easy to use program such as Google Adsense if you want a quick way to get started in the advertising arena.

The Dedication

The most important building block of a great blog is dedication. You must be willing to be dedicated to the blog. You have to put in the time and energy to get positive results. Even if you have the other three components, unless you take the time to update your posts each day, you will not be getting optimum results. Dedication can help a lot. It can hide the fact that you are a beginner and allow you to create a beautiful and functional blog. No matter how little experienced you are dedication can cover that up. You can have a great blog as long as you take the time to give some of your energy to the project.

According to Google, Google’s Blog Search is “Google search technology focused on blogs”. It includes search engine results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com community, but across the blogosphere at large.

What the Big Deal Is

A lot of people have probably heard about this extra version of search Google has added and are greeting it with a big yawn, particularly since it’s still in Beta. So what is the big deal, anyway?

The big deal is that the top search engine in the world, which was already paying particular attention to blogs in regular search results, seems to make a subtle statement with the introduction of blog-specific searches.

Blogs are important enough to warrant their own special level of search, and not just as an advanced search option, but in their own search engine.

If search engines are paying attention to blogging that closely, you should be too — if you want better search engine results.

Current fans of blogs will be able to search the freshest results so that they can see what is being discussed right now - information that is often as fresh as the news, and draws upon sources that the media-at-large either doesn’t have ready access to, or interest in.

So to those with even the most obscure interests or hobbies, a blog search powered by a top search engine gives ready access to fresh information on any subject that someone can blog about.

And if a blog doesn’t yet exist on these narrow themes? You can be the one to start the discussion.

Why It Matters to Your Business

Speaking of the media, this is likely to become one of the many tools that a journalist in the know would use in order to research a story, or to find out more information about a company, directly from the people who use its products or services.

Technorati, is at present, arguably a better tool, but it’s just not as well known as the Google brand. If you’re a power searcher, you already know what Technorati is. But the key thing to understand is that most consumers - even B2B consumers - aren’t as deeply involved in the internet.

But even those folks know what Google is.

There’s an even more obvious advantage to this specialized search.

Google Blog search has the unprecedented potential to bring the mainstream surfer into blogging, even more than Yahoo’s RSS Headlines pioneered the start of making RSS mainstream about a year ago. Why?

While many of your clients will fall instantly in love with RSS, it’s more fair to them to present its possibilities in a format that’s easier for them to digest. It’s not as hard to explain a blog - and if you can’t you can simply tell them it’s a more frequently updated part of your existing site.

When Google’s Blog Search is brought more to the front in coming months, if your site gets into position to be visible when more of the internet population becomes blog-happy, then the traffic potential for your site may prove to be enormous.

The proper use of one RSS feed in one of my content management systems doubled my traffic, with most of the new users coming from Yahoo, this time last year. Another feed increased my daily traffic another 75%, and brought me additional return traffic as well.

At the time the margin between Yahoo and Google was wider than it is today — so the potential increase from being in Google boggles the mind.

How to Get Listed

According to the Blog Search Help Page:

“If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also, we will soon be providing a form that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven’t picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information on this.”

This means that if you’re already blogging - and responsibly pinging, you’re probably already listed.

If you haven’t been blogging, you’re in luck. This special brand of Google search is still in Beta, so if you get moving now, you still have enough time to start getting into position. And since the search currently seems to be focused on freshness and relevance, if you keep up the blogging once you start, and you keep your theme narrow, you could still dominate your niche.

Do It Today

The mantra for blogging before was that, proper blogging is a sure fire way to increase traffic, as well as build stronger ties to your end users or clients, not to mention that it is the simplest of the many implementations of RSS.

Now, with all three major search engines paying more attention to both RSS and Blogging, you can get spidered more frequently, get more of your pages indexed more deeply, and be included in more searches.

You have absolutely no time to waste - if you’re not blogging already, you need to get started quickly. Many webmasters are hesitating because they haven’t been able to find a blog system that fits well with their site, or find the most popular tools too sophisticated for their needs.

There are literally dozens of free resources to help you decide between the standard systems that were originally built for the personal blogger, and the more robust solutions that are aimed at the medium-sized or corporate company - but that’s another article.

Whatever you chose, the important thing is to get started blogging today. You’ll be missing out on targeted traffic from the most dominant search engine, from the most sophisticated surfers today, and sooner than you know it, the mainstream web.

Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the co-owner of Leveraged Promotion, which provides many solutions for companies who prefer to out-source their online promotion needs. At http://blog.leveragedpromotion.com you can find out more about how RSS, Blogs, and Podcasting can increase your online visibility.

First of all, if you have a blog then you should ping it. Now you are wondering, what is pinging? Pinging is a way to let other users and other blog tracking sites know that you have updated your blog. You should ping your blog every time you write new content and update your blog. This way others know immediately that your blog has been updated.

Now why is this good for your business?

Pinging lets people know you have updated so they will come back to your site. This allows you to build blog traffic. Your blog is connected to your business or is your business (in my case and many others) and helps to build traffic. Since pinging alerts the major blog tracking sites it then helps search engines crawl and reindex your new content much quicker. This also helps your search engine positioning which is even better for your business. It is better for your business because it brings new potential customers to your website via targeted traffic.

To ping your blog every time you update your blog, I suggest using Pingomatic.com or pingat.com since these two blog pinging tools are free. Don’t pay for pinging software since these tools are truly free and work just as well. You are now on your way to blogging success!

Copyright 2005 -All Rights Reserved

About The Author: Amanda Compton is a work at home mom to 2 little boys. She owns and publishes an informative Home Business Resource site for Work at Home Moms. Go to http://www.HomeJobsForMoms.biz for daily tips, help, and support for Work at Home Moms to achieve Internet Home Business Success!

Feel free to re-print this article provided that all hyperlinks and author biography are kept as-is.

Blogging is a term that means different things to different people. To some people it means keeping an online journal. To others blogging is about creating a community of people who can contribute to a growing discussion on a specific topic. To me, however, blogging is about creating and running an entire web site. That’s because blogging can actually be used as a complete content management system for almost any web site.

There are several reasons why you should consider using blog pages to run your entire web site. These include:

* You can make changes to your web site content without the need for specialist software

* You can make changes to your content from anywhere you can access the web; you don’t need to be at your PC.

* You can make changes to content quickly - more quickly than with software.

* You can make changes to content without incurring cost - unlike using a web design agency.

* You can use blogs to create content with colleagues, working as a team - something that’s more difficult and more costly with software.

All of these benefits can be obtained free of charge using Blogger.com to run your pages. To use Blogger.com as a content management system, take the following steps:

1. Create a web page template for your entire site.

2. Include Blogger.com ‘tags’ for each blog entry within your template. The key tags you will need are: <$BlogItemTitle$> and <$BlogItemBody$>. These tags will insert the title and the text for each item you enter into your blog.

3. Set up each page of your web site as a separate blog using the ‘advanced’ settings.

4. For each blog, use your template code as the template within Blogger.com

5. Post a single entry into each blog, which is the main content for your page.

6. Publish your blog! That’s it!

In the future, you will be able to change the content or add to it, simply by logging onto Blogger.com, choosing the appropriate blog (or page of your web site) and then editing the post item.

People are beginning to realize the potential for content management using blogs. You no longer have to see blogs in terms of a single page that is added to your web site. Instead, you can view blogging as the way you run your web site.

If you want answers to the top blogging questions you can get a free guide to the Top 15 Questions on Blogging from: http://www.infoselling.com/blogging/howtoblog.htm

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an author of 27 books and thousands of articles. He runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own information products, ebooks, reports and articles online.

http://www.infoselling.com

Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. So obviously, filters and legislation are not the solution, for consumers, publishers, or marketers.

Everyone has been left scratching their heads and asking… What do I do to avoid this crap and make the Internet mine again? How do I build my business and promote it without having to deal with email? After all, what’s the point in spending money on email advertising campaigns when there is no guarantee that the emails will even reach their destination?

Enter… RSS.
RSS is the perfect communication tool. It’s applications far outreach those of email for marketing, publishing and personal communications. RSS is the answer to our communication woes.

Using RSS to create blogs for communicating with customers, affiliates, partners and family is far and away more effective and reliable than email ever was. As a marketing tool, it really packs a punch that email never could. The reason being is that blogs are targets for search engine spiders. They are themselves, a web presence, whereas email never was and never will be.

Just like a web page, search engine spiders hit blog pages and rank them. The difference between the static web page and the RSS feed is that web pages seldom update their content, RSS feeds, by design, are created to be dynamic and provide regularly updated content, in theory, depending on the blog owner of course. This prompts the search engine spiders to revisit and rerank them more often.

For writers, publishers and and anyone else with something to say, RSS has been a godsend. It has provided the answer to the question of what to do now. Blogging has replaced email for those who have become frustrated with dealing with the problems of email publishing and marketing. Publishers can now get their message out to their subscribers without the headaches associated with sending email, or posting static pages to the web. Even publishing an ezine to the Internet as a web page required the sending of email to make readers aware of the newest issue.

As with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and blog publishing is no exception. Now that RSS has become the rage for marketing purposes, several people have taken it upon themselves, in the name of the almighty dollar, to pollute this well too. The newest rash of ‘RSS tools’ have created some issues of ethics and and credibility. With perhaps the honest intention of being search engine optimization tools, or an automated system for fetching content, this batch of stuff has too much potential for misuse. The result of misuse of these types of programs can be devastating. Already some of these programs have been banned from places like Google and Blogharbour because of this potential.

Programs such as these in the hands of the inexperienced, will cause future problems for bloggers down the road. More and more pages generated using these programs will be banned, and getting banned, right out of the gate, for a newbie, would be a sad thing indeed.

The right way to use blogging to increase your search engine presence is to publish good content. Period. Provide useful information to those who are looking for it. Become someone’s trusted information provider, and you have a customer for life. Publish keyword rich articles that give the searcher what they are looking for… solutions for problems.

Publish your information regularly. Weekly is good, daily is better. Sending pings and things too often will get you blacklisted too.

And here is where networking comes in… Find content for your blog from article banks, where authors submit their work for reprint. List yourself in databases as one who accepts article submissions. Get to know other authors and publishers and share content with them. Syndicate your blogs in exchange with other bloggers. Watch your world explode with new opportunities.

Automation in business is a good thing, but it has its place. Nothing beats human communication when dealing with people and creating partnerships. Do you want to talk to an autoresponder? No, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Some of the new programs designed for the automation of article collection have legal issues to consider. The biggest being copyright infringement. Not every author wants their work reprinted, or they require control over where their work is displayed. (Which is as it should be.) Without manually seeking your content, you could very well find yourself being served papers for publishing someone else’s work without permission.

Plagiarism is another issue. If you don’t follow certain rules for reprinting contributory work, you stand to be hounded for plagiarism. Yet another sticky issue.

Some of the new programs mock safelists, or resemble FFA sites. Before long, those types of blog pages will become banned as well. Search engines will figure out a way to block non-informational blog pages, those that carry nothing but links or classifieds. (Is your head sore from hitting that brick wall yet?)

Still, there are other programs designed to post spam to blogs using the comments feature. This is referred to as comment spam. The only solution thus far, to battle comment spam, is to disallow your readers the option of leaving comments. This is a bad thing, because allowing your readers to interact with you is supposed to be one of the benefits of using this form of communication.

The makers of these programs may have had good intentions to start with, but have ultimately created Frankenstein’s Monster. Many are stating that their programs are not spam, because they do not involve email. That is a cop out if I ever heard one. Spam is the transmission of unwanted stuff, whether it is sent to your inbox, or your blog, or even the search engines themselves. Search engines want relevant content, not pages of of keywords, or links. So feeding them page after page of nonsense is spam.

Everyone hates spam, except the spammers, so why be a part of something loathed by so many and embraced by a few? Bad business if you ask me.

The only real way to combat these issues is to simply not use the programs themselves. Do your due diligence and create a reputation as a trusted information provider, not a blog bomber, and your business will prosper. Using these programs will ultimately diminish your reputation and your livelihood.

Your customers are looking for information, a solution to a problem. Give that to them, not just endless pages of links. You will achieve your rightful spot in the ranks, and you stand a far better chance for longevity. There are good RSS tools available, you just need to look beneath the sales copy to find them. And if you are new to RSS and blogging, do some research. Find someone who knows, really knows what RSS is and how to use it, and ask some questions. Don’t go out and spend buckets of money on something you’re not sure how to use, because you could be doing yourself more harm than good.

A few good books to read some solid information on RSS and blogs…

RSS, Blogs and Syndication

RSS Advertising Secrets

Taming The eBeastie

Copyright © 2005

The Trii-Zine Ezine
http://www.ezines1.com

Trina L.C. Schiller - http://www.trinaschiller.ws

webpublished at www.theinfozone.net

During the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and beyond, we saw many images on our television screens of looters, and people shooting at police officers and fire-fighters. We were shown many very disturbing images and we have all heard many very emotional stories.

We have also seen many examples of heroic efforts and real heroes.

In his first speech as Prime Minister in 1940, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

Today, the American Gulf Coast, and New Orleans is facing its own “war”. It will be a war of rebuilding, overcoming bureaucratic red-tape, in many cases, years of deeply entrenched corruption. The task of rebuilding is going to be a huge task.

The world is watching, and in some cases, expecting America to fail.

The British Press, infamous for tabloid journalism at its worst, have reported “Doctors Killed Critically Ill Patients” and that “British Aid to Katrina Victims to be Burnt”. Many of these stories have not been covered by other major media and can not be fully confirmed. Sensationalism? Perhaps.

What is starting to come out from this disaster are the stories of many unsung heroics performed by people from all walks of life, and from all over the nation, and the globe.

Today, the word “Hero” is perhaps overused. But in the response to this disaster, there are many real people who have “stepped up” and performed deeds that are heroic.

The coming days, weeks, months, and years, are going to need hard work, and the combined efforts of caring people everywhere. The recovery efforts are going to take a long time and likely will fade from the front pages of most newspapers, vanish from the lead stories of most televisions and leave the people of New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast States to do most of the hard work.

The need for real heros has never been greater. The only question remains, is who will “step-up” and offer the real leadership needed in this effort? Where are the Winston Churchills?

These leaders will come forward, terrible events always offer “heroes” a way to come forward and offer up that kind of leadership.

The rebuilding efforts offer unique opportunities however that should be explored.

The communications infrastructure could be replaced with modern wireless communications. “Telecommunications? Who needs wired telephones when we can use low-cost WiFi routers throughout the city (as is now common in much of the world).”

Homes that have been destroyed could be replaced with structures that are designed to withstand future storms. Dome shaped homes, while looking rather futuristic are also very hurricane resistant.

The federal government has pledged billions of dollars to rebuilding the infrastructure, and President Bush has promised to make things “better” than they were before. The opportunity is present for a rebuilding effort that will ensure that the area is far more hurricane resistant than ever before.

The promises have been made, that is the easiest thing for a politician to do. Now comes the hard part, making sure that those promises are honored.

The real work will be done by the people who live in the disaster area. That is perhaps the real opportunity here. As people rebuild, and work together, they will forge bonds to their new neighborhoods, and to their newly rebuild city.

There is an opportunity for greater civic pride, and “ownership” in the areas which will be rebuild. Further, there are job opportunities, where the people displaced by the storm will learn new skills as well. Those skills will help as well in creating new pride in accomplishing and learning those new skills.

In some ways, the role of governments will be to set the standards for building codes, and to make sure that the massive funds offered are used in the most economical and effective means possible.

The involvement of the people affected however is paramount and should be a priority of all levels of local, state and federal government officials.

With “blood, sweat, toil and tears”, this could be the Gulf Coast and New Orleans’ finest hours.

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a
cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because
everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while?
The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I
deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and
blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no
reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn
why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how
blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Blog content is king

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters,
still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of
them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each
medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects
your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and
delivers important content in a particular style.

I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog
entries in meryl’s notes, you’ll notice they’re more personal.
When blogs first hit the scene in the late ’90s, they were
personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog
has transformed from personal to business speak, although I
still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and
their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans
want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the
average business person. Other business people want information
on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products
offering information of no value, few people will return. The
people whose products sell well are the ones who provide
valuable information. Readers already know what kind of
information they’re getting, so they trust that when they buy
something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value
must be reflected in their blog. It’s much like people who only
sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

Who should venture where one has not blogged before?

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide
whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white
(what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

* Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?

* Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?

* Do you read other blogs or feeds?

* Can you provide information of value to others not just to
yourself? * How large is your newsletter subscriber list?

* How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or
month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog
almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post
multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to
other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort
to come to yours. Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to
learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering
topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their
opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog
discussions are common, and that’s where trackback comes in
handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another
blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog’s comments
page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback
link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL
for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and
pasting in your blog’s trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily
basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good
indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a
blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a
long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic
formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an
overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity,
your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Pick a niche

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche
topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and
keeping an audience. meryl’s notes focuses on three areas:
webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I
need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry
points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet
marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in
Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the
geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl’s notes. It’s
about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the
geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in
meryl’s notes. This blog is written for a different
audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication
capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read
the content through the software. For an explanation of
syndication and feed readers, refer to What Is This RSS, XML,
RDF, and Atom Business? When sending a new issue of a
newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way
the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases
are covered.

Blogs in disguise use the same tools

Blogging tools aren’t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are
an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often
than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of
tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than
the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand.
Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the
blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey
CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to
manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their
site. Women’s Spirituality is one such site. Karen Casey may not
use the blog, but she does have discussions surrounding the
articles she writes.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding
creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the
intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and
metrics. They’re used for knowledge management. With information
pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and
process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a
cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best
practices won’t help, since the decision to blog is based on the
organization’s mission, needs and goals along with its target
market’s desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one,
sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about
dumb business moves.

The Blog

By Brad Schneider www.blog-hints.com

The Blog, or Weblog first emerged in the 1990’s as an avenue for regular people to express themselves online. Blogs are popular because reading can read another’s writing without input from editors, managers, or anyone else.

Getting Started

Getting started is very easy to do. Probably the hardest thing about getting a blog started is trying to figure out what to blog about. Once you have that down, choose a host. There are many different blog hosts out there, and most are free. I use Blogger.com. I like it, because it is free and very user friendly. You don’t need to know any HTML or other programming to get going. Of course, Blogger is not the only one there is, just the only one that I use.

Taking it to the next level

If your blog is getting a bit stale, you can spice it up a bit with some HTML programming. I learned most of my programming skills while customizing my own blog. If you need a little tutoring on some minor programming of you blog, just do a google search for “html tutor”, and you will find many very helpful sites. Most improvements you can make to your blog are fairly simple, and most beginners can pull it off. If you are browsing around and see something on someone else’s blog that you “gotta have”, this is how you get it…. If you are using Microsoft Explorer, open the view menu and select “source”. Then just scroll down until you find the part that you want, then select the “area”, and copy it. Then simply drop it into your own blog and make any changes to make it more like your own!

Please keep in mind:

I have seen a lot of blogs that are packed so full of “neat stuff”, it makes me not want to read the blog. Just remember, that just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. If you want people to read your blogs, make it appealing to them. I have seen many blogs that contain so much code, it takes an enormous amount of time for the page to load. It’s best to keep it kind of simple.

Making Money on Your Blog

Did you now you can actually make money from your blog? Well, if people read your blog, then you can make money from it. Now hold on, you’re probably not going to get rich off it, but a little bit certainly won’t hurt! Probably the most popular means of making your blog work for you is Adsense. You have probably noticed these ads by Google on many pages you visit. If you ever clicked on one of these ads, you helped somebody get paid. These ads are very easy to set up. You will need to register, then you will be able to pick the style of advertisement for your blog. Do you want some discrete text boxes? Or do you want to go with the big skyscraper in your sidebar with the graphics in them? This is all customizable to your preferences. It is recommended that you try to make the ad colors match the rest of your blog. The easiest way to do this is from the Google Adsense Adsense site. If you know the 6 digit RGB color code you can make an exact match. You should also keep in mind that these ads are generated from page content, so if you have a blog devoted to, let’s say, bridal goods, then your ads may be a bit more relevant than someone whos blogs are their own daily ranting and have no particular subject. Yahoo! is now beta testing their version of this program, and they are taking sign-ups. MSN has indicated that they also are looking into starting an online ads program. Another way to earn money from your blog are affiliates. Affiliates are companies that pay allow you to place ads on your blog, and when a sale is made due to a link from your site, you get paid. There are many companies out there that offer this partnership, just go out and look. I highly recommend against paying any money for directories of these companies. It just doesn’t make sense! You can normally find several simply by using your search engine and searching for them.

Blog Etiquette

I have never seen an instruction manual on what to say in a blog, and that is because anything goes here. You should, however, keep in mind that there is a common courtesy with blogs. If a blogger is allowing the general public to comment on their blog, then you should follow the same guidelines that the blogger goes by. For example, if this blog appears to be family oriented, then I would assume that the blogger would not like foul language in the comments area. However, if the blog is carries an adult oriented tone, then I would say anything goes. Another thing I would like to put out is a little practice I call “Blog-Spamming”. Yes, you have a nice new blog, and you want everyone to read it, but please don’t go from blog to blog pasting a ready made line of code in bloggers comment area, linking back to your blog. This tends to aggravate the blogger. If you are going to do so, you should make sure it is ok with the blog owner first. If your blog is good enough then the traffic will come to you.

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