Tech Linz' Blog

Tris Hussey (@trishussey) spoke about the ABC’s of Blogging at Northern Voice today (#nv10), a conference on social media and the internet. Tris began his session with the concept of story telling. Hussey states that blogging is about writing and really isn’t about technology. Technology is just a tool. Here’s a summary the key discussion points in the session:

If you’re starting a blog, he suggests checking out:
WordPress.com, Typepad, Tumblr.com, Posterous.com

Dealing with comments on your blog:
When people make comments that you don’t like, you can delete them. Your blog is like your living room. You get to decide what is ok there.

Hosted or Not Hosted?
Audience Member wanted to know how much technology you need to know to start a blog:
Find out if you want to host or be hosted? Use hosted if you don’t have any tech experience. It’s extremely simple to use. Someone else takes care of the server. Other option, if you get a host, you will definitely need to buy a domain name. He says don’t use Go Daddy (apparently interface is bad…I use it though and don’t mind it).

Tris compares a hosted services to living in a dorm, it’s very limited. ie: you can’t use adsense ads on a hosted blog. You have more control with your own host.

To install WordPress on your own host, you use wordpress.org to download the blog and install on your servers. Note: you’ll need google analytics or woopra (new stats program)

Costs of hosts: domain purchase, plus approx. $10/month for hosting.
Host Suggestions: Dreamhost, Fantastico

Length of blog post: Write until your done…and then edit it. If it flows, but it’s long, that’s ok. Just make sure its an interesting read.

Frequency of Blog Post: To build traffic on a blog, you need to build 3 to 5 times per week. Tris has tested this over and over again. You cannot really post too much. People will read what they want to read.

Note: You can only post a couple sentences if you want. It doesn’t have to be a few paragraphs.
The key it to make it interesting and useful for people.

How do I make money from my blog?
Tris, laughs, people don’t make money with blogging ;)
(TL)You would need thousands of visitors per day in order to pull notable amount of revenue from your blog.

Search Engines
“Blogs are like crack to search engines” – Tris Hussey’s quote of the day
Whether is hosted or on a host, it doesn’t make a difference to search engines

Blogger – is it a good site to use?
Tris isn’t a big fan of blogger, he feels that google has abandoned it. It hasn’t been updated very much over the last 7 years, but those that use it feel it works just fine. In summary, it’s not the super-star of blog platforms ;)

Tags versus Categories:
Categories are like silverware drawer, the description of your cutlery (ie: knife) is your tag
Micro level descriptors: Tags
Macro level descriptors: Categories

Interesting tidbit: People read screens 30% slower and with 30% less comprehension than from paper.

WordPress 3 will have the capability to put a category as a menu items. Coming next week!