Blogging Best Practices

Maintaining a blog is hard work, as is clearly evidenced by the fact that I can’t seem to maintain one…ever. But aside from that initial time and effort, what makes a blog successful? I’ve researched a few best practices in blogging on EchoDitto that will help transform your blog into something that people actually want to read.

• It’s okay to be opinionated and show your personality. Isn’t that the whole purpose of a blog in the first place? If people didn’t want to know your opinion, they could just read the news. Are you passionate about something? Show it! Be more interesting than the back of a cereal box.

• Links and tags are your friend. If you want your blog to be seen, don’t shy away from shameless plugging! Link to your own posts in other posts. Tag your entries with relevant key words to help them appear on search engines more easily. If it could be at all relevant, tag it.

• Interaction is key. Your readers want to know that you are hearing what they have to say. If someone leaves a comment on your blog, respond to them! Again, if they didn’t want that personal element they could seek out the same information somewhere other than a blog.

I’ve also learned simply from observation and being a blog reader myself that it’s best if the blogger keeps to a regular posting schedule, and clearly advertises that schedule. It’s a lot easier for the reader if they know specifically when you will have a new post up. Checking back multiple times in the hopes of seeing something new will just frustrate the reader and cause them to give up on you if there isn’t any new content to feed their hungry minds.

It’s funny that the girl that can’t maintain a blog to save her life is discussing best practices, but the first step in succeeding is having the knowledge to succeed! Hopefully these tips will help skyrocket your blog (and mine, if I ever get it off the ground) to glory!

Source:

“Blogging Best Practices.” EchoDitto (blog), n.d. Accessed February 24, 2014. http://www.echoditto.com/insights/blogging-best-practices.

Social Media and Adobe Connect

During this course, we had to select a social media platform and present on it to the class in a live, webinar forum called Adobe Connect.  I chose to present on Twitter, since I’m pretty familiar with the platform and it is a heavy hitter in e-communication today. This was my first time ever using Adobe Connect and it was quite an experience!

At first, I was very confused. Do I need an account? Does it cost money and is there a free trial? How do I become a presenter in the classroom? Should I share my screen or upload a document? I went into the classroom a few times to play around, and that helped answer a lot of my questions. I also communicated via email with a few of my classmates and we helped each other figure it out.

On the day of the presentation, I logged in plenty early. Since I was presenting first, I uploaded my PowerPoint and played around with switching between slides, etc. to make sure everything was working. I also tested my audio with a few of the other participants who were in the session waiting for the presentations.

During the presentation, I was surprisingly relaxed and comfortable. I liked being able to communicate with my classmates as they typed into the text box and I could answer their questions out loud. I think that was a great way to keep people engaged and promote interaction.

Once it was over and I got to listen to/watch my recorded presentation, I thought it went well. My volume was good, the slides worked properly, and the class got engaged.  I started a little too quickly, so my intro was cut off a bit, but that can easily be fixed for next time. Although I was nervous about using a new platform, I learned a lot and am looking forward to getting to use this medium again towards the end of the course!

If you want to take a look at my presentation on Twitter, you can find it here!

Blog Introduction

Hello readers! Thanks for stopping by my blog for COMM4228. Here’s my first blog post for this course. I wanted to give you all a little bit of information as to what my motivation is for this blog, in addition to what I’m hoping I will get out of blogging this quarter.

I’ve always wanted to be a blogger. I admire those who create and maintain fantastic, popular blogs, yet somehow I have never been able to do that. No matter how many times I try to create and maintain a blog, it just doesn’t last. Is it out of laziness? Am I just not cut out for the blogging world? Who knows? But I’m hoping that blogging for this class assignment will help me figure that out.

I’m hoping this blog will keep me disciplined and help me learn. Throughout this course we’ve been discussing a lot of key points about e-communication and I think I can apply a lot of those concepts into my own personal blog, but I have to have the drive and the discipline to actually do it. So let’s see if this class assignment blog helps me uncover the tools and the drive to develop and maintain my personal blog. There’s only one way to find out!

Until next time, readers!