Blogging
I red something interesting in the book "The new rules of marketing" by David Meerman Scott. THere's maybe ten pages in there about blogging that I thought that I should red. I did and I agree with him about what he says about blogging.
Fear not journalists, blogging is not here to steal your jobs... The book is from 2007 and in the new media world that is almost old, and journalists in the regular media doesn't seem to have a problem with blogging anymore.
He still say something I didn't think about before and that makes a lot of sense.
"Thinking of the web as a city, rather than a newspaper, and bloggers as individual citizens voices probides implications for all net-citizens."
Tuesday, January 13 2009
Tuesday was dedicated to the national TV-program C-CPAN. “If women rule, there would be no war”, said a caller who called to C-SPAN. This is one of two things; either really stupid or really smart. I will explain the latter. Within feminist movement there are two main branches. One belief is that woman and men have different minds but equal value, and the other belief is that women and men have the same mind and therefore are equal in every aspect. In the latter one there would not be a difference in men or women ruling. In the first belief, on the other hand, where the minds of men and women work different, there would be a difference in governance depending on who has the power. This is where the challenge comes. The spoken quote does not state how that change would take place, which is impossible. So; the statement is dumb as hell. The art of political power is so set in its ways so the outcome would be the same regardless of which theory apply to us.
There is no way we can erase history and everything that has happened has shaped how we look at thing and how we run out societies, which are our culture. Because of that both feminist branches struggles with determine what is a result of our gender and what is a result of our culture. Is the ability to prepare food something women are good at because of our genes or is it because women has been the ones raised to cook food all through history? I am not making any statement whether women are good at cooking or not, I just want to give an example of what I mean.
When it comes to politics it has always been men but even though women are starting to get into politics they have to do politics in the way that it has always been done. If that way is a masculine way or not I leave up to the scientist to figure out. My point is that it would be impossible to see if there would be no war if women ruled. Because that history has already decided how politics work and gender can no longer do anything about it. In theory most people would probably say they belong to the first one of the beliefs about men and women, but by saying the quote is dumb they join the second belief. Most people are not feminist and do not consider these kind of things when statements are made but I get curious of what exactly the caller meant. The guest on C- span spoke mostly about that Obama have a big challenge ahead of him and I don’t know if he can live up to the expectations. As a foreign exchange student I see the election from another perspective and from a position where I am not affected of his politics in a direct way. I have to say that the expectations on Obama are very high and that people seem to believe that he will solve all problems in a heartbeat. This might be the attitude before every president’s inauguration, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe there are some people who are going to be disappointed when they realize that he is not going be able to solve everything in a heartbeat. I am not making judgment on however Obama will solve the crisis and problem U.S seem to be in, I am just saying that even if he do solve them it is going take time for him and effort from everyone else. I noticed that many of the questions from the audience to the C-SPAN guest concerned education and that makes me happy. I believe that education is a problem solver. Educate people and the will get a better understanding for everything.
How to maintain a blog or How I learned to make myself interesting
I have had this blog for three months now and the time has passed fast. I have tried to keep it up and to keep it interesting. I know that I have failed from time to time with both of them but it has given me further knowledge. I haven't quite yet figured out my theme, I guees I don't really find my life interesting enough to actually write about or I just find it to personal to be posted online. I do however like to post my thoughts and opinions online and i believe that the more people discuss their thoughts and opinions, the better. This is a way for me to leave my thoughts and opinions out there for anyone to discuss.
It might sounds sleezy but I do like blogging and I hope that I will create and maintain many more blogs in the future. This is an article I made in magazine article writing class as a result of my blogging.
Mimmi Törnberg
Blogging is a phenomenon that started in the 90’s and is defined as “a website that publishes updates in reverse chronological order”, according to MediaShift. The credit for starting the blog is given to Jorn Barger, who coined the expression weblog in 1997. In the beginning, blogging was to post links to other content on the web, a way of sorting the mess out. Today, blogging is more like a forum to post your personal thoughts, opinions or life. But, even though anyone can do it, a blog without readers is useless online. If you don’t want to have readers to your blog, there is no reason to make it public online. So, to start a blog is easy. You just go and sign up for an account at a blog server or maybe you create your own page and put it up on a server by yourself. Blogger.com and Blog.com is two of the most popular blogging platforms. Any way you do it, creating a blog is easy, but how do you maintain it?
If you want to keep you blog up and running for a while, there are three important items to pay attention on, Content, Updating and Images. Your readers should come for the content, return for the updates and stay for the pictures.
- ContentWithout useful content there’s no use of reading the blog in the first place. Pick a theme and stick to it. Even though the theme limits your blog’s existence, it is better to shut the blog down and start another one than to have one blog with a thousand themes. And don’t fool yourself with thinking that categories will solve this issue. Having one blog with a thousand different themes in different categories is not a good idea. The blog in itself should tell the reader what the theme is. If it is a personal blog about you and your life, you should have personal pictures and a description of you on the page, if your blog is about you making comments about the news, there should be pictures relating to that and a description of why you are interested in the news. There’s no such thing as bad content, the question is how you present it. If you stick to your theme you will get readers that are interested in that theme and they will return for updates.
- UpdatingA blog is an internet thing. A media in the internet medium and therefore it is fast. There’s no use of having a blog if you do not intend to update it. But, it is better to be consistent rather than effective. Update your blog at certain times or days rather than a hundred times one day and not at all for weeks. Your readers want to recognize themselves so they need consistency. Every writer has a writer’s block from time to time; there is no escape from that. But there are ways of getting around that because writer’s block is not an option if you want to maintain your blog in the best possible way. Make sure that you write entries that you don’t post so that when the writer’s block appear, you have something to post. If you manage to follow the updating, your readers are going to return to you because they know that there will be something new there for them.
- ImagesThe visual aspect is important. The main thing is the content and if that is not good, it doesn’t matter how many pictures you have or how good they are, the blog will be bad. But with good content, pictures are going to make it even better. When you first start a blog you pick a design for it. Make sure the design fits the content and stands out so it doesn’t look like any other blog that is out there. But don’t forget about the visual after that. Your readers are going to return to you blog over and over again so they are going to be used to seeing your design. Therefore it is important that you post pictures and graphic elements in your entries. Make sure to choose images that go with your content. And make sure that you don’t overdo it. One picture to every entry is going to make it stiff and predicable so that defeats the reason for having a picture in the first place. Pictures and graphic elements are only ways of getting your blog to stand out from the other blogs that are equally good at updating and have the same theme.
Then there is one more thing;, a thing that have nothing to do with the actual blog but if you don’t do it, your blog will not have any readers or they will come very slowly. That is marketing your blog. Make sure that your friends and family look at it every day, so it will appear in search tools. Make sure to always link to your blog, whenever you are anywhere on the web.
