Thursday, March 03, 2005
A blog about blogging
Well here I have to give an account of my blogging experience.
First of all I hadn't even heard of blogging and had to find out a bit about it. To sum it up it is a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links (yawn). A blog seems to be a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, and there seems to be as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
I decided blogging.com was the best blogging site for my needs as it allowed enough editing of the html and was quite clear and concise on how to use it, although a bit more help and direction could have been provided. After working out all the idiosyncrasies of blogging.com (ie not being able to cut and paste in the compose section of the editor which is rather strange) I managed to think up a name and change the html on my page to allow a graphical heading of my suiting. Images were my first stumbling block as I wasn't sure where to keep the images in the first place to provide a url link. I then realised I could send images via the 'hello' program which works in cooperation with blogger.com. I could then delete this post but still keep the url of the image.
I had a quick peruse of some other blog sites to see how other people communicated and how many visitors they were receiving as a result of their sites.
I decided to place as many interests as possible in my profile to allow other bloggers to find my site via keywords. After adding a site meter I noticed that in just over a week I had managed to receive one hundred and fifty visitors but much to my dismay, only one comment. The reason, I realised was that there was no communication between other bloggers of similar interests and writing style and therefore no real sense of entering a community. To change this I started adding a couple of comments in blogging sites that I liked and subjects that I was interested in. An example of this is the site by 'scary duck'. I added a comment and also, rather cheekily, asked if he would add me to his links. This, in turn meant I had now formed a communication link with scary duck and other people who viewed his site, which was rather a lot judging by his visitor clock. I think the large input that this site gets is mainly due to the witty, interesting writing which, in turn, received a bit of advertising by winning the 2002 guardian blog awards.
Entering this community seems to help a lot as I have started to receive comments and feedback from a few other bloggers.Although there is a long way to go.
I have to say I think there is a difference blogging anonymously rather than being known (ie by University colleagues and teachers) as it is harder to express yourself in a more candid way when you know, personally or professionally, some of your readers.
First of all I hadn't even heard of blogging and had to find out a bit about it. To sum it up it is a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links (yawn). A blog seems to be a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, and there seems to be as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
I decided blogging.com was the best blogging site for my needs as it allowed enough editing of the html and was quite clear and concise on how to use it, although a bit more help and direction could have been provided. After working out all the idiosyncrasies of blogging.com (ie not being able to cut and paste in the compose section of the editor which is rather strange) I managed to think up a name and change the html on my page to allow a graphical heading of my suiting. Images were my first stumbling block as I wasn't sure where to keep the images in the first place to provide a url link. I then realised I could send images via the 'hello' program which works in cooperation with blogger.com. I could then delete this post but still keep the url of the image.
I had a quick peruse of some other blog sites to see how other people communicated and how many visitors they were receiving as a result of their sites.
I decided to place as many interests as possible in my profile to allow other bloggers to find my site via keywords. After adding a site meter I noticed that in just over a week I had managed to receive one hundred and fifty visitors but much to my dismay, only one comment. The reason, I realised was that there was no communication between other bloggers of similar interests and writing style and therefore no real sense of entering a community. To change this I started adding a couple of comments in blogging sites that I liked and subjects that I was interested in. An example of this is the site by 'scary duck'. I added a comment and also, rather cheekily, asked if he would add me to his links. This, in turn meant I had now formed a communication link with scary duck and other people who viewed his site, which was rather a lot judging by his visitor clock. I think the large input that this site gets is mainly due to the witty, interesting writing which, in turn, received a bit of advertising by winning the 2002 guardian blog awards.
Entering this community seems to help a lot as I have started to receive comments and feedback from a few other bloggers.Although there is a long way to go.
I have to say I think there is a difference blogging anonymously rather than being known (ie by University colleagues and teachers) as it is harder to express yourself in a more candid way when you know, personally or professionally, some of your readers.
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Hi mr mole... I came looking at your site from the comment on London metroblogs. Could you do me a little favour and pop over there and drop me a mail? just click on my name in the comments bar... cheers luv
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