This clinic was posted May 15th, 2009 at 1:00 pm. on Twitter. Please follow me on Twitter so we can converse live there!
I set up a blog for a friend yesterday. He doesn’t quite understand the idea of the blog yet -but he’s very excited to be doing one.
So I thought I’d teach him and realized that lots of people aren’t really sure what a blog does. So this is my What is a Blog Twitter Clinic
1st – a blog is a medium by which you can report news. That sounds funny doesn’t it? Well that’s what it is. News is the part that’s odd.
News really is the plural of the word new. So news would be the things that are new to you, to somebody. That might be as trivial as your. .
. . . day at the dentist, or your child’s first day of school or your thoughts on Obama. To someone that is news. When you put that in . . .
writing on the internet – that’s a blog. There’s all kinds of blogs, personal, what your kids are doing, just about cameras, nutrition,
or even just your family reunion photos from over the years. They’re all the same in that they provide content for an interested reader.
The way they differ is in purpose. Some build blogs do generate income and others just for fun. And others do both. I suggest both.
Now there’s a difference from using a WordPress blog package to design your company website than using it for a blog. Some get that confused
If you say you have a blog, but it’s really just your company website that is managed like a blog – I’m not sure I’d count that. HOWEVER, I
would say that you could have a blog within a website. GoDaddy.com’s president has a blog in their website. You can read his thoughts, his
goals, his company’s new products. It’s truly a blog – but the website itself is not. So if you want to set up a blog, how do you do that?
Well, you’ve got two real choices.You can get a free blog at wordpress.com where you’re webaddress will be something like name.wordpress.com
Or you can use WordPress-like software to load a blog onto your own domain name -like mine: Letters From Dan This is the better way
The free ones are easy and nice, but you can’t do much with them. With the wordpress.org software, you can do ANYTHING at all.
Now you can get the wordpress software for free, absolutely free at Expert WordPress’s Free WordPress Installer Tool and they provide free installation videos. FREE
What you would need to pay for; however, is your domain name ($10/yr) and a place to host the site. (Hosting is a different topic).
I suggest you get a hosting account at Hostgator You can host many, many websites there if you wanted to .
Once you have those two things, all you have to do is scour the internet for a free WordPress theme that you like. A theme is how the blog
will look. 2 columns, red, pictures on the top, black background, sport, whatever. There are thousands of free themes.Google WordPress theme
Once you’ve got a domain name, hosting, and a theme – all is left for you is writing articles. And the fun – that’s up to you too.
If you want to make money from your blog, you either need to sell something, feature ads, or link to something for a commission. That’s not
hard either. But if you decide to go that route, and need help, let me know I’ll teach you the ropes. So to answer the Twitter Clinic Question
“What is a blog?” – It’s an opportunity for you to write and converse with the world about topics and news that interests you.