Thursday, July 16, 2009

Blogging Basics

By Owen Jones

Web publishing (web logging [blogging])continues to expand in usage, particularly since the advent of internet marketing (IM). These days, technologically-savvy corporate businessmen and even business employees, use blogs to manage their relationships with their consumers. They share their company's expertise, culture and any other information, that can help develop the customer's interest in their products and services.

However, not only businessmen venture into the world of blogging, ordinary computer users do as well. This is because they can not only voice their opinions and thoughts to others, but they can also earn some money too in more ways than one. For example: from selling ad space to offering expert services, which in its turn can help build their reputation as a professional in that field.

If you are contemplating entering the blogosphere, you should be prepared for the problems you might encounter in certain areas of blogging like: selecting, setting up and configuring your blogging software. However, because the collection of configurations varies considerably, a newbie blogger can still get confused. The tools are not the only obstacles you must master the terminology and etiquette used in blogging.

Tools for Blogging: Basically, the software tools for your blog depend a great deal on your webspace provider, since you will need to store your blog somewhere. For instance, RSS functionality can be absent from one provider but present in another. Additionally, some blogging software tool providers can cost as little as $4 each month depending on the quality of service you choose, while others can be used for free but perhaps with more limited resources.

Choosing the right software tool depends on you of course. If you have enough money to spare for a blog or if you want to really get serious about blogging and hope to earn an income in the future, which is always a distinct possibility, you have the choice of paying for blogging software. However, if you are a newbie blogger, it might be advisable to start with one of the free blog software providers.

Fortunately, some webspace providers that charge for their services also allow free trials, which can range from 10 to 30 days. This is an excellent way to test the services they provide without paying any money. Then, if you find a provider with which you are comfortable and which offers the services you require, you can always use their free trial period fully before subscribing.

Blogging Terminology: a blogging community is like a secret society and like most secret societies, it has its own language that you must learn too. Although, Internet-savvy individuals might already be familiar with many of these terms, it might be a little bit harder for those with limited or no background in Web publishing whatsoever.

The most important term in blogging is 'post'. A post occurs every time you (or someone else) place an update to your blog. Secondly, since blogs are a means of communication, people can also leave comments. If your readers leave a message regarding your published content, this message is called a 'comment'. Usually, the comments are labeled and time-stamped to allow you and other readers to see who posted the comment and when it was posted.

'Comment spam' is the term that refers to when a poster keeps repeating the same comment time after time again or leaves comments that advertise his own products, although they are totally unrelated to the blog's theme. This can be a worry for the blog owner as his blog is, in effect, being hijacked by the spammer to promote his own blogs, products or Web sites.

These are three of the most important new terms that you will encounter in blogging. Exploration and experience can help you understand the other terminology involved in blogging, it's really not that difficult.

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