Richard Farrar's Blog

Photo by dantaylor

It’s been exactly one year to the day since I re-launched my website as a BLOG and published my first blog post. So perhaps it’s an appropriate time to look back at what I’ve achieved on the blogging front in the past year, what I’ve learnt and what  plans I have for the blog .

When I launched my blog, I planned on writing a post  once a week. This didn’t seem to be a too onerous schedule and I managed to maintain it for the first few months, but of late my posting frequency has slipped a little. I now seem to average 3 posts a month.

With each of my posts, I try to aim for a post length of 1,000 words or so. Due to the technical nature of most of my posts, I don’t just hammer them out and click publish. I like to research the post, checking my facts and then spend a little time after writing to re-read and edit the post to make sure it all makes sense and flows correctly; it’s surprising how much time this takes, hence my slip in posting frequency.

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Photo by foxtongue

Certain websites are obviously blogs, whereas with others it’s sometimes far more difficult to tell. So what is it that really defines a website as being a blog and when is a blog no longer a blog?

Blogging is now extremely popular, some may even say it’s become a phenomenon. With millions of blogs worldwide, you will have undoubtedly stumbled across one in your travels through cyberspace, either knowingly or unknowingly.

However, with so many blogs around nowadays, they invariably come in a bewildering array of different shapes and sizes. Some are immediately obvious as blogs, others less so. So what is a blog and what are the key elements that define one as such?

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If you’ve stumbled around the web for a while, then you’ve probably seen the little pictures that some people use alongside their comments in blog posts,  or on forums. So how do you go about getting your own picture against your blog comments or forum posts?

Not all blogs or forums allow their users to have pictures of themselves next to their comments or posts, but those that do tend to utilise the same easy-to-use system.

If you post questions on forums, or leave comments on blog posts and would like to enhance your comments with your photograph or some graphical icon, then read on, as it’s really not that difficult to achieve.

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While structured articles may not be appropriate to every blog, the vast majority of blogs will undoubtedly benefit from having a definite article structure, easing readability, improving general reader engagement and even helping you during the writing process.

Writing a blog post or web article is not that dissimilar to writing any other sort of article, and as such many of the same writing principles remain. To communicate your thoughts in cohesive and coherent fashion, and capture the reader’s attention, your articles really need to follow a defined structure. A good article structure will help readability and enable you to get your point across better.

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Once you’ve gone through the initial birth pains and learning curve of setting up your blog, then begins the rewarding phase when you’re no longer learning to blog, but begin blogging to learn.

If you’ve never blogged before, then you’ll have a steep learning curve to go through while you learn the technicalities of blogging, together with the language used by bloggers and the protocols and ethics of the blogging community.

However, once this period is over and you get into your stride with your blog, the learning doesn’t have to cease. At this point, you have a choice. You can continue bumbling along, writing your regular postings on your particular topic using your new found blogging skills, or you can push yourself to learn more about your field of interest, expanding your, and your reader’s horizons in the process.

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