Blogging gets a bad press: It's a neutral platform that's actually very powerful in the hands of a professional journalist. You don't need pajamas and a flamethrower to blog.
Blogging software truly is a website-out-of-the-box now; and a blog is truly easy to create without technical skills. My favorite open source platform: WordPress.com (free). Favorite subscription-based platform: TypePad.com. TypePad's parent company has now released an open source version of its powerful enterprise blogging platform, MoveableType. In SA, iblog claims to be the biggest.
Here's how a mainstream publisher, USA TODAY, has decided to use blogs: as "surveillance" that gets out in front of the reader. USA TODAY now has a large family of blogs, doing everything from breaking news to pop culture to weather.
To succeed, a blog needs to be:
- Frequent. At least four posts a day
- Conversational. You're talking to your readers, not preaching
- Connected. Link to an interact with the other blogs in your subject area; that will build traffic.
A good resource for developing and marketing your blog is ProBlogger.net
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