All in Blogging
I tend to do a lot of writing over the weekend, mostly because that's when I have the "spare" time to do so. As a reoccuring feature, I'm going to recap some of my more memorable, timely and important (to me at least) posts every Monday morning so you can have a little something to read as you're enjoying your coffee, tea, breakfast, etc.
I'll include stuff from this blog, as well as Technorati, Shamable and Every Other Thursday.
Enjoy!
I've been blogging since the Blog City days. Remember Blog City? It was basically a blogging platform before Blogger came around and well before WordPress became the leader in the space.
Since those early days, I've come across a lot of people in the blogosphere. Their backgrounds run the gamut. Some were in the PR business, some blue collar types and others former journalists like me (I'm a former reporter for the Boston Globe).
One of the things we all have in common, is that we love to write. The other thing we all had in common is that we'd come across a ton of nut jobs in the blogging space.
Blogger In Draft is Google's playground for their blog platform, Blogger. It showcases a number of features that blog owners can test out before they go live on the traditional Blogger platform.
Recently, Google launched a Blogger Template Designer and one of the most asked for feature since then, was the ability to upload your own background image.
In today's blogging world, it's all about speed and efficiency. There are a slew of tools to help you write, grab photos, edit content, etc. One of the tools are those mobile apps that allow you to create text from voice commands. Now, for you WordPress bloggers, you'll be able to "call" in your posts.
Think about it in an old school journalism way. On tight deadlines, reporters would call the copy desk and call their stories in so they could meet their deadlines and not hold up production of the paper.
The WordPress concept is just like that, only there's no one else on the other end of the phone, just some cool technology.
Blogging is old hat. Online journals like Blog City, Geocities, Live Journal and the original Blogger (pre-Google), paved the way for today's Wordpress, Squarespace, Google's Blogger and CSS. Despite blogging being around for quite some time, there are still writers and executives of companies out there that are nervous about blogging. They don't know what to say. They don't think anyone will care to read their stuff. They just don't think it's worth the investment.
However, once most bloggers get a whiff of success, i.e. your first thread that reaches over 100 views and gets a slew of comments, they are hooked.
One of the first thing a blogger must do is decide what their site is going to look like. The brand is everything.
With flash sites being part of the webs wicked past, bloggers and designers the like have turned back the clock to simpler times -- clean designs, less noise and simple navigation.
Here are some of the more popular tools that bloggers are using these days and ones that will make the content process seamless.