Teaching how to set up and maintain a blog was something plain and simple years ago . Nowadays things have become more complex… much more: HTML5, SEO, personal brand, positioning, ads, affiliation, social media… Those aren’t but a few terms to take in count really seriously. Enrich your lessons!
A black-hole-mass like concentrated knowledge pill about blogging for students:
- Your personal blog:
- Blogger: it’s integrated in Google and it gives many useful stats, but you have to promote it (#4) and look for readers.
- Online articles sites:out-of-your-blog publishing sites, like ezinearticles, or hubpages. You’ll be likely to have more visits.
- Your articles:
- Measures: try something like three hundred word articles, redacted in no more than one hour, five to seven articles a week.
- Be original, different, specific, unique, constant, fascinating, provocative...
- Other: grammar, style… ensure the communicative process takes place, i.e, what you mean is what it’s been understood.
- Open up comments to know about your audience’s opinion (and watch out trolls).
- Tools:
- Google docs: easy to work online, insert things, thesaurus, copy&paste it to blogger… You can even write through your mobile or laptop. Check my other article about this.
- Google drive: keep things safe and anywhere.
- SEO it: make Google find your articles more easily.
- Your blog:
- Article structure: title, head, body (inverted pyramid).
- Blogger’s options: tags, keywords, search description...
- HTML-format it: <title><h1><h2><b><i>,<a href>...
- Include your bio, social networks links, contact info, an article index…
- Provide enough text.
- Include options for subscription, sharing…
- Include information for the search engine: meta, title...
- Word strategy:
- Analyze buzzwords about your blog’s subject and decide how to use them.
- Social networks (the relevant ones):
- Make people identify you easily: subject, knowledge, blog, name, brand, colors, logo, quality...
- Multipublish:
- For each entry of your blog, republish!: slideshare, issuu, online articles sites… Don’t forget to include your bio on the last page.
- Link your blog to those sites and vice versa.
- Signature: include your blog’s link in your mail/forum/… signature.
- Be just and don’t:
- Use farm links.
- Publish in dark sites.
- Be untrustworthy.
- Ask people to click or visit your pages.
- Be offensive.
- Use proprietary resources.
- Analyze everything:
- Blogger’s stats:
- Audience (countries…): you may write in English but also have visitors from Spain (like me).
- Sources: important, as you know what publishing sites are proving more useful to spread your words.
- Social impact:
- Kred.
- Ads?
- Dangers:
- Loss of credibility.
- People fed up of ads.
- Ads not related with your blog’s main subject.
- Readapt/rearrange/replan/rethink.
And to finish, a board with some useful tools (evolving unstoppably):