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)