Blogs

shesarainbo · #1 (**permalink**) 01-16-2004, 01:06 PM

What do you think about blogs? I have heard many diffrent opinions, but from a designers point of view, I am unsure if they are something that I want to become interested in, other than for personal reasons. I have seen good and bad critique. What do you think?

Shesarainbo

mikmik · #2 (**permalink**) 01-16-2004, 03:33 PM

I was kind of wondering myself. I have been visiting a lot of good ones lately, but they are mostly made by webdesigners and programmers themselves.

I don't know what the market is like for designing for others, though. I would think that it has many opportunities.

Here is a BIG resource page that I found :
http://www.blogroots.com/resources.blog

A free PHP w/no Db to install GNU public licence:
http://www.pivotlog.net/
I am interested in discussion on this.

WiseWizards · #3 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 03:06 PM

I Feel Blogs Are Great To Use, Especially If There's Something Daily You Wish For Visitors To See. You Can Visit My Blog At http://MikeysTown.BlogSpot.com To Give You A General Idea Of How I Use One.

jaca · #4 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 04:16 PM

I agree as well. I have had a blog up for a few months now and my traffic has increased a great deal, as have my clients. To me it's like a min-newsletter, giving free information and helping to build my client base.

I also promote Webprowold and some of the topics I have been involved in. I think it's fun too!

My blog is: http://www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/blog/blogger.html

kimbecker1 · #5 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 05:23 PM

I am going to set up a Blog for my baby store.

I love the test blog that I have been using.

Do you think that a blog will work well with my customers many of whom are not very tech savvy??

jaca · #6 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 06:25 PM

Hi Kim,

So many people read blogs/journals these days that I don't think there should be a problem. You would just link the blog on your web site. I have my blog through blogger.com, it's free, and found it easy to use.

WiseWizards · #7 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 08:01 PM

I Use Blogger.com For My Web Blog, And I Agree! It's Very Easy And Has Many Features To Improve Your Blog. I Have Also Seen An Increase In The Amount Of Visitors I Receive Right After I Started The Blog.

If You Have Questions, Don't Hesitate To Ask Me In Any Way!

ranjan · #8 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 08:53 PM

One of the most important features of a blog is that its interactive. By interactive, I do not mean the tiny comment box that pops up, its an interactive feature all right, but a blogs interactivity lies below its surface. Lets take a couple of examples.

I sell a software product(could be any product), lets say. Someone from the www writes a review about my product without me knowing about it. A visitor to the reviewers website, reads the review, click on the link to my product page. Now I have the reviewers link in my stats. I can read the review and make comments on the review in real time on my blog. A quick and easy way to track product feedback and support.

Lets take another example

I write about a topic related to my product/service/business on my blog. Fellow bloggers comment on the topic linking to my topic with their view, I make comment on their comments. This creates an on topic incoming/outgoing linking to and from the website. Quality linking takes place boosting my search engine ranking.

These are just a few of the interactive features that I could quickly think of. If you see a blog to be just beyond a journal, it will be more than a journal, it will be an effective marketing tool for your business.

jaca · #9 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 09:56 PM

Hi Ranjan,

I agree totally with the marketing concept of a blog. It has made a huge difference in my traffic and contacts.

I highly recommend it and use it give to potential clients, they certainly love free information, articles and tips.

redcircle · #10 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 10:40 PM

So what you are saying is that you need to use one of the services and have your blog off of your own host inorder to get better rankings? Personally I'd rather reinvent the wheel rather than have my work hosted on a big corporate style site.

ppayne · #11 (**permalink**) 01-22-2004, 01:58 AM

Oo, my first post!

I run J-List (www.jlist.com), a site that sells products from Japan, and we've always had a running "updates from Japan" thing in which I talk about what I notice in Japan, how living here is different from life in the U.S. and so on. It's quite popular and we have 60,000 people on our mailing list. Of course, living in rural Japan makes it easy to come up with something fresh to write about three times a week.

I think I'd have to caution against doing a blog/whatever unless you understand the medium. Nothing is worse than a person jumping on the latest Internet bandwagon without knowing the ins and outs of it. Besides, clearly Blogs are just one current kind of medium -- they'll probably be replaced by Flogs or Glogs or something else that we can't imagine until it gets here. Why not try to go beyond the Blog in some way?

PeterC · #12 (**permalink**) 01-22-2004, 09:38 AM

Bloging, linking and googling, it's all together in the new york times Jan22, Engineering Google Results to Make a Political Point: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/te...22goog.html?th
Need to say more?
PeterC

acornwebworks · #13 (**permalink**) 01-22-2004, 10:09 PM

Yes, I could have started a new topic, but decided to add onto this, as I have already 'stolen' a lot of ideas :-) and it seems to be in keeping with the discussion.

I run a computer training center for people with disabilities. We teach things like Intro, Word, and other basics on a regular basis. But I like to throw in a few 'different' classes every semester so that people are having fun while improving their computing skills.

This semester we (no, I...my trainers teach the other stuff) are teaching a blogging class. It's going to be a 4 hour class, with a lot of hands on.

While I already have some ideas, I'd like to pick your brains.

If you were teaching a blogging class, what would you definitely cover, what would you cover if you had time, and what wouldn't you bother with?

While you have already pointed me to some great resources, what would you definitely make sure people were aware of. And what would you tell people to avoid.

Thanks in advance!!!

ranjan · #14 (**permalink**) 01-22-2004, 10:11 PM

Quote:

So what you are saying is that you need to use one of the services and have your blog off of your own host inorder to get better rankings? Personally I'd rather reinvent the wheel rather than have my work hosted on a big corporate style site.

Hosted blogs, just like hosted guestbooks are unprofessional. Your business blog must:

1. Be a part of your own domain
2. Be ads free

However there is no reason to reinvent the wheel, There are some excellent blog tool out there.

My recommendation is

http://www.textpattern.com/

jred · #15 (**permalink**) 01-30-2004, 05:23 PM

Greymatter is a pretty good batch of blog software. I like it because it's *not* database driven, all you need is perl/cgi access. It's also pretty easy to set up & customize.

The biggest thing to figure out is why you want to have a blog. Mine is personal, www.cautioninc.com(blatant plug), and mostly gets visitors from friends & family. I did notice that when a friend was posting a lot of news bits & links, I tended to get a lot more visitors. Google tended to do a decent job of finding it. Now that she doesn't post news anymore & it's just me, I get much less hits.

One of the biggest things is to have regular updates. One plus is that you can update the blog, and not need to update the main site as often.

Blogs can be good, but they aren't for everyone.