Thursday, September 19, 2013

Features of Blogging

When it comes to actually writing and setting up your blog, you need to understand the features of a blog. Knowing and understanding these features can help you understand both what the blog is and how it works. This will help you to understand how people make a lot of money off of it and how you can do the same. Below is an explanation of different parts of a standard blog and the features therein.


Posting Structure


Do you understand the posting structure of the blog and how it works? Each entry is referred to as a “post”. Posts may also be called entries or articles. They may be made on a daily basis or weekly, bimonthly, monthly, etc. The way you enter your blog post varies according to what type of blog service you are using. Many have a direct entry text box where you simply type in what you want to say. You don’t have to know any special coding information. Some blogs have what is called WYSIWYG editors. This stands for “what you see is what you get” and it means easy text entry no matter who you are.

Most blog sites and interfaces have HTML input as well for those of you who enjoy working with code and would like to enter your blogs this way. There are also different formats for listing links, photos, etc. Most work the same way as text. You have the option to either enter as HTML or enter in the WYSIWYG editors.

Interactivity


Another great thing about blogs is that they are interactive. This is one thing that made them so popular. People have the opportunity to respond to what they read. You can post comments to the blog when you read it which are often shown instantly. There are some cases where the blog owner may use a spam filter or blocker and your comment will have to be reviewed first. The comments are usually found at the end of the post. People feel great about the fact that they can add their own thoughts and opinions and communicate with other people that are reading the blog. This is also a great way for advertisers to find out how the readers feel about something.

The archive feature


Archiving is another great feature of blogging. Most blogs have this option so that you can archive your posts by categories  and date. If you find a blog that you like, you can look back on past entries.

 In fact, most blogs have an archive that is searchable for you to easily bring up certain topics or dates and read the entries. The regular blog will have features set up so that after a certain number of days or certain number of blog entries posted, the older entries will roll off the main page and become archived. There are also other features that are usually built into the blog itself such as the ability to subscribe to the content of that blog or excerpts of the blog content. You can also use RSS feeds or Atom feeds to let people know you have updated content or to let them put your content on their sites.

Blogs also have links to other blogs so they all link together, or at least the ones with similar content do. So you can see how great it is for a company or business that wants to get their name out there or make themselves known. It can be very useful to make yourself known with the popular blogs in your topic or category so that you will get advertising to your own as well.

Comparing blogs to websites


You might have already noticed that blogs and websites have several similarities. There are, however, important features that make them different. The way that these sites function is very different. A regular website stays what is called “static”. While it may be updated, it is not updated as regularly as blogs. Most of the information and content that is on the website will stay the same. A blog however, may be constantly changing not only on a daily basis but from hour to hour, etc.

Blogs have the bonus of having a permanent web address just like a website but they are different because they are also interactive and very dynamic. The person keeping the blog maintains in conversation with the reader so they feel more in touch with the blogger and the blog. It’s more personal than simply reading words on a website.

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