- Blogging Platforms
- Finding the Best Blog for Your Business
- Combining Blogs with Other Networking Sites
- Case Studies
- Summary
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Finding the Best Blog for Your Business
In the beginning, there was the text blog, and it was good. As blogging became more popular and multimedia objects exploded on the Web, blogging sites and software kept up and eventually created different types of blogging that fall into many different categories.
Vlogs
Vlogs, which is a portmanteau from the words video blogs, include video clips that you can view in the blog. Some sites, such as YouTube, let you post videos on their site for others to view. Blogging sites also let you import video objects into blog posts. Some blogs, such as Adverblog shown in Figure 3.11, also let you embed the video on your website or in your email as well as share the video through Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google+.
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Figure 3.11. The Adverblog vlog.
For example, Nancy’s Lullaby Nursery (mentioned earlier in this chapter) started off with a text blog about infant and toddler care. But Nancy, the owner, decided that she wanted to put together a video showing some care techniques. Her husband recorded the video for the blog, edited the blog on his computer, saved the file in the appropriate format for the blog, and posted the video along with a little text in a new blog post. To avoid any permission issues with putting photos and videos of babies on their blog, Nancy uses several different-sized dummies in her examples.
Photoblogs
Photoblogs are self-explanatory: They are blogs that use photos as their primary means of communication. Kathleen Connally’s photoblog of Durham Township, Pennsylvania, shown in Figure 3.12, was a finalist in the 2010 Best American Photoblog (www.photoblogawards.com).
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Figure 3.12. The Kathleen Connally photoblog.
In the case of Nancy’s Lullaby Nursery, Nancy decided she wanted to take pictures of babies who had “graduated” from her program. (Nancy cares for babies and toddlers up to three years of age.) So, Nancy put her husband to work again and had him take pictures of her with happy toddlers upon their “graduation.” She then added them to the latest blog post.
Podcast Blogs
Soon after Apple’s iPod became a sensation, people learned how to record audio files and have them download onto iPods for listening. Thus, the term podcasting was coined. Today, the New Oxford American Dictionary defines podcasting as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.” As newer iPod models became able to display videos, and blogs were able to do that, the definition of a podcast expanded to include video as well. The This Week in Tech blog produced by Leo Laporte shows the list of podcasts in the Latest Posts section, as shown in Figure 3.13. This is an example of a blog that lets you play streaming audio by clicking the Play button underneath the TWiT logo or download the audio podcast in MP3 format.
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Figure 3.13. The This Week in Tech blog with a streaming and downloadable pod-cast.
For Nancy’s Lullaby Nursery, she found that she was starting to become a trusted resource and people began asking her for more information. She decided to entice people to receive an email newsletter by offering access to a members’ area of her website that included free podcasts that she recorded using her husband’s computer, headset, and the free, open source Audacity sound recorder. Podcast topics Nancy has talked about include how to calm a teething baby, when to feed your baby different types of foods, and how to select the right daycare provider. Nancy also made the latter podcast available to the public on her website so interested customers could hear Nancy talk about finding the right provider.
Tumblelogs
The term tumblelog describes a blog that includes a wide variety of blogging types, such as videos, audio, and photos along with text. The popular Tumblr blog, shown in Figure 3.14, is a good example of a tumblelog.
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Figure 3.14. The Tumblr tumblelog.
As you can tell from the figure, tumblelogs are primarily lighter on text and heavier on multimedia elements such as photos and video. Usually, the text describes the photo or video shown in the tumblelog. The text doesn’t have to be brief, and you can post more than one photo and/or video in your Tumblr tumblelog. For example, we found a tumblelog on Tumblr that had four photos and a long post with not only a makeup tutorial but also notes about the model and lipstick featured in the photos.
In the case of Nancy’s Lullaby Nursery, the addition of videos and photos has turned her blog into a tumblelog, and as her blog has become more popular with the addition of multimedia elements, she’s focused on that more than writing text.
Microblogs and Sideblogs
A fairly recent trend in blogging is called microblogging, where people don’t have to type much to communicate. Indeed, microblogging sites such as Twitter let you post only 140 characters in each blog post, so you must be brief. Eric’s Twitter site, shown in Figure 3.15, has a lot of updates from people and services he follows on Twitter.
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Figure 3.15. Eric Butow’s Twitter page.
A related feature of microblogging is sideblogging, where you can post little snippets of information that don’t require a lot of thought. For example, in the Halfway There blog shown in Figure 3.16, the What I’m Reading section that shows readers the books Zeno Ferox is currently reading is considered a sideblog because it contains snippets of information with graphics of book covers as well as the book titles and authors. Sideblogs have become so popular on blog sites that you can add your own sideblog widgets on blogging platform sites such as WordPress.
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Figure 3.16. The What I’m Reading sideblog on the Halfway There blog.
Moblogs
As cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) started merging into complete communications devices with which you can talk to people, get your email, listen to music, and surf the Web, blogging sites such as Moblog (mobile log = moblog) made it easy for people to upload text and photos to their blog. People can then log on to the Moblog website, as shown in Figure 3.17, and view your latest photos.
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Figure 3.17. The Moblog website.
TIP
If you’re not sure where to start, the plethora of blogging options to choose from can seem rather daunting. The best thing to do in this case is to just go back to the basics and listen to your customers. If you ask them where they congregate online, how they do so, and what information they’d like from you, you’ll have a better idea of how to build your blog. For example, if your clients tell you they primarily use their smartphones to travel and share information, you might want to create a moblog to invite your customers to upload their photos and videos from their smartphones to share with other blog readers. You may also want to include videos in your blog, such as showing people how a new product works. It’s all part of responsible blogging that you learn about in Chapter 4, “Blogging Responsibly.”