Using a Blog to Become an Expert Part 1
I was a member of Toastmasters a couple years ago, and recently rejoined the group. If you are unfamiliar with the group, Toastmasters is a club dedicated to improving the members’ public speaking abilities. You can find out more information about them, and probably even find a club near you at the Toastmasters website.
As part of the group, I have to get up in front of the other members and give speeches. Lately, I’ve been doing them in a series, and focusing on different aspects of becoming seen as an expert in your field. A number of the members requested notes on my speeches, especially when they got a little technical, or were a quick how to. So, that’s what this post is all about. I recently spoke on creating your own blog, and here are some of my notes and resources.
A blog is simply a website in which someone keeps a log of their activities or thoughts. Like a diary or journal. Thus the term stands for web log – we(b log). At this point, it is often used interchangeably with software used for creating these weblogs. And, some of the software has become very sophisticated and is a good platform for all kinds of sites, not just journals.
Why Have a Blog?
Today, blogging has become popular as a means of promoting yourself or your business. Many companies have a corporate blog, and even top level executives keep them. It’s not just for teenage girls to talk about cute boys in school. Some of the reasons why blogging has become popular:
- Promote yourself
- Promote your company
- Rank well in the search engines
- Create a mailing list
- Content management
- Sell stuff
- Have people interact with what you write (comments)
Why use blog software instead of just a plain page?
There are two primary reasons why a blog is better than a standard page. First, it is really easy to add and manage content. Depending on the blogging software you use, you can add a post (that’s something you’ve written to the blog) by simply sending an email to the blog’s own email address. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
The second reason is because of RSS. The term RSS is generally translated as ‘Really Simple Syndication.’ This creates a file with a special format containing whatever you post to your blog. This is called a feed. People use software called a ‘feed reader’ to then ‘subscribe’ to your blog. This means that their software goes out and grabs the content of your blog and brings it back to their computer for them to read, watch, or listen to. It is extremely simple, and you can gain an audience of thousands pretty quickly.
Some people take these RSS feeds and take the content you’ve created and post it onto their own sites. Yes, your content was syndicated to these other sites, just like a television networks syndicates their programs to hundreds of tv stations. The feeds generally have your name and a link back to your website. So, people end up knowing you and visiting your blog because of the syndication of your content. An added benefit is that because it is linking back to your page, the search engines see those links and decide that your site must be pretty important. Your site ends up climbing to the number one spot on the search engines for your topics.