Blogging

Because the blogosphere is pretty crowded, it’s a good idea to find out a bit about the anatomy of a blog, what makes a good one, and what it takes to keep one going before you dive right in and start sharing with the world. Blogging For Dummies, 2nd Edition gives you all the basics so you can get a good start. And if you’ve been around the blog a few times and want to advance to the next level, Blogging For Dummies, 2nd Edition even takes a look at podcasting and videoblogging.

You’ll find out how to:

• Make your blog stand out in a crowd, build an audience, and even make it pay
• Choose the best software options, boost readership, and handle comments
• Generate revenue from your blog with ads and sponsorships
• Protect your privacy and your job
• Deal with spam and the inappropriate comments from that guy who posts several times a day
• Find your niche
• Attract and keep readers
• Use your blog to promote your business, cause, or organization
• Add audio, video, cool widgets, and more

Ready? Get Blogging for Dummies and let’s get started!

While personal blogs take up much of the blogosphere, blogs are quickly gaining popularity in business as an inexpensive and amazingly effective marketing tool. It’s time for a practical book about business blogging: this is the first book to demonstrate how businesses are blogging and how you can use blogging technology to converse with your customers to build your brand and sell your products.

Written from the business person/designer’s perspectives, this book shows how businesses can leverage current, real-world blogging techniques, tools, and platforms to promote and enhance their ventures. The key idea is that the conversation with your market is stronger and more meaningful with a blog. Filled with practical information and a how-to approach, this book provides case studies of companies as large as Boeing or General Motors and as small as Clip-’n-seal. Readers will learn about the types of business blogs, how companies use blogs, how to sell blogs to management and IT, effective blog design, content, and conversation, pitfalls to avoid, how to develop Web presence, and more.

Turn Your Blog Into Big Bucks

Blogs are one of the internet's fastest-growing phenomena-and one of the best and easiest ways to make money online. Learn how to choose a topic, start a blog and attract thousands of avid readers. Then use your blog to generate income from advertisers, promotions, affiliate links and other techniques-all from your own home.

We'll reveal how to:

• Attract visitors and hold their interest
• Entice advertisers to promote their products on your blog
• Earn an affiliate fee when your visitors shop at some of the most popular websites
• Promote your blog and get listed on top blog search engines

Successful bloggers reveal their expert strategies for maximizing profits. Pick up this book and get started on the road to riches-without leaving your desk!

Almost overnight, blogging has become a social, political, and business force to be reckoned with. Your fellow students, workers, and competitors are joining the blogosphereand making money, influencing elections, getting hired, growing market share, and having funto the tune of 8,000 new bloggers a day.

Clear Blogging sets out to answer in nontechnical terms what blogging has to offer and why and how you should blog. If youve never read a blog, but you keep hearing that term on the news, Clear Blogging will show you why blogging has shaken up mainstream media, and how a blogger can end up on CNN. If youre just starting to read blogs, Clear Blogging is your native guide to the blogosphere, covering how to get the best, most interesting information with the least amount of time and effort. The main course of Clear Blogging shows what you stand to gain from blogging, and how you can go from your first post to being welcomed aboard the blogospheres A-list.

Whether youre already blogging or youre considering it, youll want to get a copy of this book because it

• Covers how blogging can improve your job prospects, professional practice, business revenue, company reputation, and the world you live in
• Includes over 50 interviews with successful bloggers who are influencing products, policy makers, potential employers, and millions of the general publicall while earning an online reputation and real profits
• Shows you how to apply the best practices of news gathering to build your blogs reputation and brand
• Is heavy on the specific benefits of blogging and light on the technological aspects

• The elements of blogs, such as entries, sidebars, categories, comments, and index pages
• The different types of hosting services, from free to fee and from “turn key” services that are easy-to-use to DIY programs 
• Details on two popular, free “social community” hosted Web services that are ideal for casual bloggers—MSN Spaces and Yahoo! 360
• The scoop on Blogger, a popular free hosted service that has some community tools like the social networks, but is basically blog-intensive
• DIY blogging, covering three of the most powerful and flexible blog programs—Movable Type, WordPress, and Radio Userland
• Hooking into RSS feeds to distribute your blog entries beyond your site
• Choosing a newsreader
• Ways to raise the visibility of your blog and make money from blogging

Complete with step-by-step instructions and lots of screen shots, this guide walks you through everything from setting up your blog and posting your first entry to adding photos, audio, and more. It includes the URLs of lots of sample sites to see to give you an idea of blog possibilities. In addition to the essential how-to, it fills you in on:

• The blogosphere, blog culture and etiquette, snarks, macrologues, and more
• Moblogs that let you post entries remotely using your portable computer, PDA, or cell phone
• Buying a domain through a registrar such as Network Solutions, Register.com, or Go Daddy
• MP3 blogs, vlogs (videoblogs), photoblogging, audioblogging, podcasting, and more

You know you have something to say, whether it’s heavy stuff or just your thought for the day. Make your opinions known. Get your photos shown. With Blogging For Dummies, you’ll soon be blogging with the best of ‘em.