Travel Media

Archive for September, 2009

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that ‘publishes’ or features articles (which are called ‘blog posts’, ‘posts’, or ‘entries’), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following:

· Straight texts

· Photographs or images (photoblog)

· Video (videoblog)

· Audio files (audioblog)

· Hyperlinks

Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes:

· Online journal or a web diary

· Content managament system

· Online publishing platform

A typical blog has the following components:

· Post date -the date and time of the blog entry

· Category – the category that the blog belongs to

· Title – the title of the blog

· Main body – the main content of the blog

· RSS and trackback – links the blog back from other sites

· Comments – commentaries that are added by readers

· Permalinks – the URL of the full article

· Other optional items – calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins

A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the ’stats’ (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks).

There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following:

1. Political blog – on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning).

2. Personal blog – also known as online diary that may include an individual’s day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends.

3. Topical blog – with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information.

4. Health blog – on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases.

5. Literary blog – also known as litblog.

6. Travel blog – with focus on a traveler’s stories on a particular journey.

7. Research blog – on academic issues such as research notes.

8. Legal blog – on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as ‘blawgs’.

9. Media blog – focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network.

10. Religious blog – on religious topics

11. Educational blog – on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers.

12. Collaborative or collective blog – a specific topic written by a group of people.

13. Directory blog – contains a collection of numerous web sites.

14. Business blog – used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work.

15. Personification blog – focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs).

16. Spam blogs – used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as ’splogs’.

Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term “blogging” refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term “blogger” refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog.

Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types:

· Personal bloggers – people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about.

· Business bloggers – people who focus on promoting products and services.

· Organizational bloggers – people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community.

· Professional bloggers – people who are hired or paid to do blogging.

Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger).

Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers:

· Advertising programs

· RSS advertising

· Sponsorship

· Affiliate Programs

· Digital assets

· Blog network writing gigs

· Business blog writing gigs

· Non blogging writing gigs

· Donations

· Flipping blogs

· Merchandising

· Consulting and speaking

The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging:

1. Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision.

2. Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership.

3. Be an ‘expert’. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the “go-to” blogger on that topic.

4. Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging).

5. Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read.

Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

Blog Writing is a common practice these days. The number of Blog Writings has reached to 12 million and is on a rapid rise. This is because of the fact that people want to have exposure to as much people as possible in order to understand them and make them understand they feel, to share the personal feelings and much more. Blog Writing makes one to have global contacts in one leap as it is available on the World Wide Web which can be accessed from any point in the world.

So many people, corporations, groups use the Blog Writing for their specific purposes that it has become a multifaceted thing. It has a lot of purposes and aims. And to cover all of them are present a lot of types of Blog Writing. Here in the lines as under those types of Blog Writing will be discussed briefly.

The first and most common plus well known type of the Blog Writing is personal Blog Writing. These are the blogs that people write to introduce themselves to others. It is a kind of online directory. It has the list of friends and they can also be accessed and contacted. And this process goes on. It also gives the reader or visitor an opportunity to comment on any aspect of Blog Writing and its owner.

In this manner there arises a great interesting document that contains the list of comments of people for the owner of Blog Writing. This type of blog is also used to share the personal messages and ideas. People also inform each others of their known news items and then discuss them.

A Blog Writing can also be of a corporate nature. It is not necessary that a person or an individual will develop the blog but it is also possible that a company develops the blog and uses it as a marketing tool. Another very famous type of Blog Writing is a Vlog or a Blog Writing that contains media contents such as videos to be seen by the audiences. Photolog contains the photos for the general public. In the same manner there can be Blog Writing for specific fields which include the fashion blogs, education blogs, travel blogs, political blogs and niche blogs as well.

How to Create the Ultimate Blog 101’s

One wonders where all that pent-up rage, radical views, strong opinions and peculiar beliefs would be deposited without blogs. For some people, blogging offers a cathartic experience in that they are able to write about who or what is troubling them. Yet for others, by simply being able to put an idea out there is help enough for their egos and self-esteem. Writing in a blog would definitely be much cheaper than a session with an overpriced shrink. Entrepreneurs, newsmakers, tech tutors and a whole lot of others also employ the use of blogs for profit or for up to date information. There are numerous reasons for putting up and maintaining a blog but all of them have one common goal, how to get your thoughts across clearly and effectively. 

Blog 101’s are as ubiquitous as blogs themselves in the Internet. The obvious way to go here is to look for an excellent site that will be able to deliver the goods on creating and keeping up a blog. These sites offer guides, tips, how-tos and even some useful tools that will help you in the wonderful world of blogging. The topic commonly discussed initially is finding a home for your blog or the seemingly thankless job of looking for a host, free or otherwise. You might think that it’s easy enough to look for a host, google “blog host” and you’ll see that it’s not as painless as it appears. The wealth of choices available simply overwhelms the soon to be blogger. Now, let’s say you finally found a suitable home for your blog, the next challenge that you need to hurdle would most likely be the design. If you build an attractive and well-arranged blog, then they’ll most certainly come. Most blog hosts have built-in tools that will help you with that but the myriad “ready-to-wear” designs will almost certainly baffle the unversed. Blog tutorials have simple yet useful guides about designing blogs that includes topics ranging from text positioning to color schemes. Now comes the best part, content. A truly good blog tutorial site will stand out from other pretenders when it’s able to supply bloggers with relevant information concerning content. Ideas on where to get content are very crucial. The only way you are going to get considerable amount of traffic in your blog is if people are INTERESTED in it. Your content plays a very critical role in your blog’s success, it is the lifeblood of every single blog out there. If you keep good content flowing steady and fresh, that can only stand to help your blog achieve a level of greatness. Tips on the finer points of increasing traffic for your blog are very abundant in the tutorials. Be sure to take heed because dealing with keywords and search engines will be a joyful task if done properly and with decent supervision. 

Bottom line is that blog tutorials are essential partners in your blog making travels because they serve as competent and experienced guides. Up until such time that you get your blogging legs true and steady, I recommend not letting go of these sites.