WordPress Blogging Basics

✓ Personal: This type of blogger creates a blog as a personal journal or diary. Youre considered to be a personal blogger if you use your blog mainly to discuss topics that are personal to you or your life - your family, your cats, your children, or your interests (for example, technology, politics, sports, art, or photography). My own blog, which youll find at http://justagirlintheworld.com, is an example of a personal blog.

✓ Business: This type of blogger uses the power of blogs to promote her companys business services and/or products on the Internet. Blogs are very effective tools for promotion and marketing, and these blogs usually offer helpful information to readers and consumers, such as ad tips and product reviews. Business blogs also let readers provide feedback and ideas, which can help a company improve its services. Search engines (such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) really like Web sites that are updated on a regular basis, and using a blog for your business lets you update your Web site regularly with content and information that your readers and consumers may find helpful. At the same time, you can increase your companys exposure in the search engines by giving the search engines a lot of content to sift through and include in the search results. A good example of this is a company called ServerBeach - it keeps a blog on the hosted WordPress.com service at http:// serverbeach.wordpress.com.

✓ Media/journalism: More and more popular news outlets such as Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN are adding blogs to their Web sites to provide information on current events, politics, and news on a regional, national, and international level. These news organizations often have editorial bloggers as well. Editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle, for example, maintains a blog on MSNBCs Web site at http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/ blog, where he discusses his cartoons and the feedback he receives from readers.

✓ Citizen journalism: At one time, I might have put these bloggers in the Personal category, but blogs have really opened opportunities for average citizens to have a great effect on the analysis and dissemination of news and information on a national and international level. The emergence of citizen journalism coincided with the swing from old media to new media. In old media, the journalists and news organizations direct the conversation about news topics.

With the popularity of blogs and the millions of bloggers who exploded onto the Internet, old media felt a change in the wind. Average citizens, using the power of their voices on blogs, changed the direction of the conversation, with many of these bloggers fact-checking news stories and exposing inconsistencies, with the intention of keeping the media or local politicians in check. Many of these bloggers are interviewed on major cable news programs as the mainstream media recognize the importance of the emergence of the citizen voice through blogging. An example of citizen journalism is the Power Line Blog at http:// powerlineblog.com.

✓ Professional: This category of blogger is growing every day. Professional bloggers are paid to blog for individual companies or Web sites. Blog networks, such as WeblogsInc.com, hire bloggers to write on certain topics of interest. Also, several services match advertisers with bloggers, so that the advertisers pay bloggers to make blog posts about their products. Is it possible to make money as a blogger? Yes, and making money is becoming common these days. If youre interested in this type of blogging, check out Darren Rowses ProBlogger blog at http://problogger.net. Darren is considered to be the grandfather of all professional bloggers.