Sept. 1, 2011
Blogging history and tipsJ334 multimedia storytelling - Professor Robert Quigley
A little history
✤ 1994, the guy on the left created links.net, the first online diary
✤ 1997, online diarist coins “weblog”
✤ 1999, Blogger (Evan Williams)
✤ 2000 Election recount
✤ 2002 TPM fueled Trent Lott scandal
✤ 2003 AdSense
Technorati top 100 blogsAs ranked by incoming blog links over the past 6 months
“Lifestreaming’
✤ A chronicle of your life, the phrase was coined in the mid 1990s.
✤ Posterous and Tumblr are good because they’re easy (an email away).
✤ Corporations, others use it to appear more friendly and human.
Did social media kill the blog star?
✤ Controversial among bloggers
✤ It takes a lot more effort at one time to blog
✤ Social media as a traffic driver or replacement? Mainstream media wrestles with that, too
✤ Is Tumblr really blogging?
✤ AdSense
✤ Affiliate programs
✤ E-book sales
✤ Subscriptions
✤ Private ad sales
✤ Paid reviews
Can you make money off this?
The mainstream media
✤ Can’t beat them, join them
✤ Check out nytimes.com/blogs
✤ Many worked with community bloggers (none figured it out like Huffington Post did - 9,000 bloggers).
✤ Everyone has unleashed their writers (to an extent).
What service to use?
✤ Tumblr and Posterous - easy to use, have limitations
✤ WordPress, Blogger and Movable Type - more features, not as easy to use (generally)
✤ Hosted vs. self-hosted
✤ Styling CSS, html flexibility available in all platforms
Words of wisdom
The professor’s tips
✤ Write good headlines
✤ Write good explainer text - high up in the entry
✤ Entertain us!
✤ Use the right media for the entry
✤ Force a regular schedule
✤ Interact with your audience in the comments section (use Disqus or Facebook commenting)
✤ Blogrolls can get out of hand
✤ Stick to your topic
✤ Read competitor’s blogs (and comment on them)
✤ Link to others
✤ Analyze your stats
✤ Named, styled - ready to go by Sept. 8 (gave you more time)
✤ Lab time from here on out is your blogging time
✤ We will work with you to be sure you’re set up well
✤ Welcome message also due on Sept. 8
✤ Elena and I are here to help!
Create your blog (assignment)