Blogging for the terrified

Don’t be afraid!

What’s a blog then? . . . • A blog is short for ‘web log’• An online journal that can

be about anything at all. • Your journal can become

interactive• Information is written as a

blog-post• You can add pictures, video

clips, sound clips and links to other web-sites

• Your blog will have it’s own blog address

• Use a free blog host such as Blogger

• Enter your account information

• You’ll be prompted to name your blog

• Choose your colour scheme from the templates

• Play around with the settings until you are happy with the overall look.

Posts and Pages

• Posts are information you want to share.

• They are viewed on Pages

• You can add up to 10 pages on your blog.

• Each page will have a tabbed heading.

• Once you have finished writing your post, you can save it as a ‘draft’.

• Publishing it will make it visible to anybody on the internet.

• Giving your post labels or ‘tags’ will help people to find specific topics when they are searching.

• You can create any tags you want to, using the blogger facilities.

Make a comment . . .

• Once published, people viewing your blog will have the option to add comments.

• can enter their comments into a comment box, preview it and post when ready.

• Comments will be sent to the blog administrator (who-ever created the blog) for moderation.

• The whole point of blogging is that is encourages people to interact and share their point of view. It may be that you don’t especially like a comment made.

We encourage comments on this blog site, however;

we do operate a moderation policy.

All comments and thoughts are welcomed and we will not delete things just because they are negative. However, any racist, sexist, hateful, offensive or obscene comments will be deleted, as will any posts that we deem to be offensive or unsuitable. We would therefore appreciate it if you could avoid using four-letter words, etc.

and goes on to say:

If anything that you post clearly contravenes this policy, we will delete it and message you to let you know why it was deleted.

So . . . What do I write?

• Firstly, you can adopt your own writing style; less formal than say website content.

• Write about what your group is doing at the moment . . . Follow up events with pictures

• Pic&nic stuff from other blog-sites; crediting and hyper-linking it to that blog owner.

• Links are hugely important to create visitors to your site.

• Try and get a good balance between informative and interesting... Don’t bore your reader-include video links and photo’s to vary the content.

How do I get my blog noticed?

•The best way is to add a link in your emails•Ensure the address is on your newsletters

and flyers•Put a link to your blog on your website.•Use RSS feeds Really Simple

Syndication•Share your blog on social networking sites

such as

Where do I put my blog ?

•Where you host your blog, really depends on what sort of impact you want your blog to have.

•You can have a ‘stand-alone’ blog...•Stand-alone – but linked...•Integrated...•Or, a blog website