Module 1 - Blog Assignment

The start down the road of education.

photo courtesy of www.edbiyatdefteri.com

The first article was by Chris Brogan titled "How to Blog Almost Everyday"was rather insightful. He suggests that you blog about many topics, have convesations with a variety of people to discuss a wide range of topics. Also, the use of pictures and photos is very helpful to catch the reader's eye. "A picture is worth a thousand words". So that will automatically gain some conversation. Be more focused on what your customer or reader wants to see. The author also suggests, to mix up the length of your blogs, as well as, to write guest posts for other blogs.

The second article titled "How to Blog" by Farhad Manjoo was concerning the blogging efficiency. The author refers to a gentleman by the name of Felix Salmon, who says "Quantity is more important than quality", and continues with "don't be afraid of being wrong". The idea of setting a schudule to keep fresh ideas and updated information as a way to keep the interest of readers. The author draws a good comparison to both blogging and exercise. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Another good suggestion was to, get to the point of the blog. Try not to be too wordy. Most people do not have the time or patience to read a long winded blog.

The third article is titled "How to blog your way to small business success" by Matthew Bandyk.This was a rather interesting article. He suggests using a blog generating service like Typepad or Wordpress to automatically format blogs in such a way that search engines pick up on. That is very cleaver. As the author explains, anyone searching for a small business online would use a Google search. The author also suggests, keeping the self promotion to a minimum. Give people what they want to read about.

The next article titled "What a blog can do for small business" by Darrell Zahorsky was another very interesting article. He started out with the question, "What is a Blog?" He explains that a blog is a Web page with frequent updates to a journal. A man named Jorn Barger coined the name Weblogs in 1997. He noted also that there are two types of blogs, personal and business. Personal is like a diary, with opinions and research links. Business is a corporate tool used by both employees and customers, to share knowledge and expertise. Blogs are cost effective for a small business. No need to hire a web designer/developer, and any changes that need to be made can be done easily. Another advantage is that small businesses can share knowledge and expertise with a large audience.

Finally the last article titled "Use it or lose it: Five ways to keep your blogging regular" by Chris Brogan was a good reminder to keep your blog updated often. If you keep to a consistent schedule with blogs and newsletters, your readers will not lose contact with you. It is a lot harder to get readers to"warm-up" to you again, after a lengthy absense. Being inconsistent is also a negative. Going from posting three times per month to five times daily will certainly aggravate your readers and keep them from coming back to your blog.

So, how has blogging influenced your life?