Blogs and Feeds a Wonderful Marriage
Blogs are very closely aligned with feeds, in fact most blog software or online blogging applications will create an Atom feed for you automatically. There are many software applications for blogging available. We like Blogger and have been using it for over a year. Some others are Moveable Type, TypePad, and UserLand. Our own web hosting company, Hostway, has recently introduced online blog software as a free user service.
Our Blogging Tips
First, all entries are 1 or 2 paragraphs with a catchy title and the title is set as a hyperlink. You may have to add to the template page code to do this.- We usually do not include photos.
- We blog every day and sometime have 2 to 3 entries per day. Start blogging at least 5 days a week and stick with it! It will become a routine. We add to our own blog first thing in the morning before starting our work while we are reviewing mail and reading the tech news.
- We have our blog set to display one month's worth of entries on the first page.
- We have our blog set up to archive previous months.
- After 14 months, we manually delete the oldest month's entries. This is optional.
- We archive and host all pages on our own web server -- this is key to getting search engine benefits, this feature is called "Enable Post Pages" within the Blogger configuration interface.
- We promote our blog and Atom feed with RSS/XML and Add to My Yahoo! subscription buttons on our blog page and within our website.
- We are very careful what we say off topic due to possible legal actions. (Don't get carried away with the casualness of a blog and the mind set that you get once you have blogged for a while.)
- We write in a very casual conversational style that is honest and candid.
- We have customized our blog with links back to our website.
- We do not have comments enabled on our blog. Blog readers are busy and do not usually take time to write a comment. Zero comments listed may work against you in the eyes of your readers.
- We have a catchy name for our blog Web-World Watch and specifically do not list our company name in the title.
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