Exactly what is a Blog? Or RSS? Pinging? Trackbacks? In order to fully understand a subject, you must learn the 'buzz words'.
Blogs have several special terms which may be new to blogs and blogging.
This article briefly lists seven of the terms associated with blogs which should make the beginner more comfortable and able to advance into the blogging world.
1 - BLOG, BLOGGER, BLOGGING Blogs have been around on the Internet for a long time.
Originally, they were used for product updates and were known as 'web logs'.
The name blog is an abbreviation of the original term.
Simply put, a blog is a journal or diary, where individuals or businesses provide regular, fresh information for readers.
Public blogs are available for anyone to read and are usually written for a specific readership audience and are based on a particular topic.
There are many places where you can keep your blog online and many are free.
Popular free blog hosts include Wordpress.
org and Blogger.
com, which is owned by Google.
Both of these locations are good because they rank well in Google.
That's important because it helps to get your site seen by others.
A Blogger is someone who writes information for their blog.
Blogging is the process of writing the content for a blog.
2 - TEMPLATE Both free and paid blog sites allow you to select a template, that make the blog look appealing to others while establishing it as uniquely yours.
The idea is to create an appealing blog with plenty of fresh content containing relevant information.
3 - NICHE A niche is a specialised market and you need to find a niche that you have an interest in, that others also will find interesting.
If you are writing a blog purely to express your own opinions or to let off steam, this is your niche, and may or may not be interesting to others.
Many people would like to make money from their blogs too, by adding an advertising campaign on their site.
If this is why you want to create a blog, then your niche needs to have appeal to others.
To find a potentially profitable niche requires research, but that is another article.
4 - POST A post is simply a a new entry you add to your blog.
Every time you write something and publish it, you are making a new post.
Your posts are displayed newest to oldest on your blog site so people can easily see what you have written most recently.
5 - TRACKBACK LINKS Trackback links, or trackbacks, advise another blog owner if you've referred to them in a post.
Trackbacks are often done automatically in the background by the blog software.
6 - RSS FEEDS RSS feeds are code created by your blog.
A feed is a list of your posts and allows readers to subscribe to it.
This means that your subscribed readers are notified every time you post something to your blog rather than have to visit often to see if you've posted an update.
7 - PINGING Pinging sends your most recent blog to blog aggregators which are like blog search engines.
These are places that collect blog posts and group them for the interest of others, in a digest form.
Pinging is automatic by some blogs, but you can manually ping your blog yourself.
The advantage of pinging is that your blog post is listed on other popular sites and has another way of being found.
If you want to manually ping your posts, there is a lot of free software online.
Both Ping-O-Matic and Ping fm are very easy to use.
Once you understand the words, you will find it much easier to move on to more advanced topics advanced blog topics.
If you are new to the world of blogs, these seven terms should help you.
As you continue to learn, you will find new words.
Take the time to research them.
I'd recommend taking a course.
Good luck with your blogging!
Blogs have several special terms which may be new to blogs and blogging.
This article briefly lists seven of the terms associated with blogs which should make the beginner more comfortable and able to advance into the blogging world.
1 - BLOG, BLOGGER, BLOGGING Blogs have been around on the Internet for a long time.
Originally, they were used for product updates and were known as 'web logs'.
The name blog is an abbreviation of the original term.
Simply put, a blog is a journal or diary, where individuals or businesses provide regular, fresh information for readers.
Public blogs are available for anyone to read and are usually written for a specific readership audience and are based on a particular topic.
There are many places where you can keep your blog online and many are free.
Popular free blog hosts include Wordpress.
org and Blogger.
com, which is owned by Google.
Both of these locations are good because they rank well in Google.
That's important because it helps to get your site seen by others.
A Blogger is someone who writes information for their blog.
Blogging is the process of writing the content for a blog.
2 - TEMPLATE Both free and paid blog sites allow you to select a template, that make the blog look appealing to others while establishing it as uniquely yours.
The idea is to create an appealing blog with plenty of fresh content containing relevant information.
3 - NICHE A niche is a specialised market and you need to find a niche that you have an interest in, that others also will find interesting.
If you are writing a blog purely to express your own opinions or to let off steam, this is your niche, and may or may not be interesting to others.
Many people would like to make money from their blogs too, by adding an advertising campaign on their site.
If this is why you want to create a blog, then your niche needs to have appeal to others.
To find a potentially profitable niche requires research, but that is another article.
4 - POST A post is simply a a new entry you add to your blog.
Every time you write something and publish it, you are making a new post.
Your posts are displayed newest to oldest on your blog site so people can easily see what you have written most recently.
5 - TRACKBACK LINKS Trackback links, or trackbacks, advise another blog owner if you've referred to them in a post.
Trackbacks are often done automatically in the background by the blog software.
6 - RSS FEEDS RSS feeds are code created by your blog.
A feed is a list of your posts and allows readers to subscribe to it.
This means that your subscribed readers are notified every time you post something to your blog rather than have to visit often to see if you've posted an update.
7 - PINGING Pinging sends your most recent blog to blog aggregators which are like blog search engines.
These are places that collect blog posts and group them for the interest of others, in a digest form.
Pinging is automatic by some blogs, but you can manually ping your blog yourself.
The advantage of pinging is that your blog post is listed on other popular sites and has another way of being found.
If you want to manually ping your posts, there is a lot of free software online.
Both Ping-O-Matic and Ping fm are very easy to use.
Once you understand the words, you will find it much easier to move on to more advanced topics advanced blog topics.
If you are new to the world of blogs, these seven terms should help you.
As you continue to learn, you will find new words.
Take the time to research them.
I'd recommend taking a course.
Good luck with your blogging!
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