Digital Media Social Networking

In the previous article I showed you how to create a blog site on Blogger which is free.

Blogger is a great way to learn how to manage a blog site. If you already have a blog site, the principles of managing a blog site still relate to other blogging applications. So I suggest you read this article so you can pick up some interesting information on how you can improve your posting procedures.

Now that you have a Blogger blog site, you probably can’t wait to post your first blog. I’ll be showing you how to:

• Use the Blogger Post Editor
• Split your post with a Read more link
• How to save a draft post
• How to publish your post

I will be highlighting some important points when it comes to writing a post for your blog site be that Blogger or any other blogging CMS. I have also produced a video tutorial showing you how to use the post editor tool.
4 Steps To Writing A Blog Post:

• Write Your Post Offline
• Using Hyperlinks
• Remove Hidden Word Processor Formatting
• Formatting Your Post

Step 1 Write Your Post Offline
Writing a post for your blog can take a long time. Don’t let this put you off, because you are passionate about the subject you are writing about. So when you are ready to write a post, I suggest you start writing offline. Writing Offline means, first write your post on your computer using a word processor such as Word or Open Office Writer.

If you were to write your post using your blog sites Post Editor, you’ll find it very frustrating waiting for the draft post to be updated each time you save it. If you write you post offline using a word processing application, you will save a lot of time saving the document. That will allow you to  focus more on what you are writing. If you are a touch typer like me, then you’ll blitz through writing your post.

When you write your post offline, format it with:

• bold headings
• bullets
• number lists
• italic text
• links etc…

By formatting your post offline, you can see what it looks like and decide how you want the post to be formatted on your blog site.

Step 2 Using Hyperlinks
If you use links (hyperlinks) to other websites or other posts on your blog site. Add the actual link next to the text you want to use as your link surrounded by square [] brackets. This is a visual reminder where the link is, if you have a lot of text in a paragraph.

e.g. this is the text of my post for a link [http://www.mylink.com] This is the next sentence.

I hope the above example makes sense.

Step 3 Remove Hidden Word Processor Formatting
When you have finished writing and formatting our post, don’t copy and past it to your blog sites post editor. If you do, your post will look weird with formatting you didn’t want and may ruin your post. Copy and paste your post in a text editor such as notepad on windows. This will remove any hidden formatting and will produce pure text.

Don’t worry if the formatting has disappeared when you pasted the post in notepad. Now that you have removed any hidden formatting you can copy your post from notepad and paste it in your blog sites post editor.

Step 4 Formatting Your Post
When you have pasted your post from notepad to your post editor, you will notice you lost all the formatting you had in your offline document. Because you formatted it offline, you can refer to the original post document and use your post editors tools to format the text exacly the way you did in your offline document.

You will notice, if you used my suggestion in adding URL’s or web addresses for links to websites or other posts on your blogsite. Hilight the Url and copy it (Ctrs+C) then highlight the text you want to be used as a link (hyperlink)  and use the post editors Link tool to add the Url link. This will be explained in the video tutorial.

Here is the video tutorial Blogger Tutorial – How To Post a Blog

Related Articles:
How To Start A Blog – Part 2
How To Start A Blog
I hope this was helpful getting you starting posting blogs on your blog site. If you have any questions or suggestions please leave a comment.

Tags: blog, blogger, blogging, how to, social networking

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 9th, 2010 at 3:22 am and is filed under Blog Content, social networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.