Blog (top)
Many businesses use blogs to engage with customers in ways not possible with traditional advertising, and to boost their online presence by building a body of content that relates to their business. LocalBizBlogs provides you with an easy to use publishing platform for incorporating a blog into your business's marketing strategy, reaching people on a more personal level.
What is a Blog?
(taken from WikiPedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog)
A Blog, short for "Web Log", is generally known to be a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order (newest to oldest).
Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs.
- Posts
- Posts are individual entries of content consisting of a title and body. A collection of posts makes up a blog. Posts are often referred to as blog posts. Think of posts as blank canvases for your business' content.
- To create a new post, simply add the + new post link on your blog. This will provide you with a simple interface with which to add rich content to your new post.
- All posts can be modified or deleted.
- If you've changed your mind about a post, and would like to remove it, simply click the delete icon in the upper right hand corner of your post.
- If you'd like to make a change, simply click the pencil icon to edit your post.
- Post Features
- Title
- The Title (or subject) of your post is displayed in large, bold text on your blog, as well as on your RSS feed. We recommend choosing a title that will grab your visitor's attention while still remaining relevant to the content of the post.
- Body
- The body is the primary area of your post, where content is added. Use the built-in rich-text editor to format your text and create links, or add images, videos and custom HTML.
- BlogTags
- BlogTags provide you with a simple way to categorize the contents of your posts, allowing visitors to quickly find what they are looking for. Like to share recipes on your blog? Tag your recipe-related posts with 'recipe' and provide your visitors with one-click access to all the shared recipes inside your blog. But don't stop there - the more relevant tags you add, the more accessible your posts become.
- Separate BlogTags with commas. For example, a pumpkin pie recipe might be tagged as pumpkin pie, recipe, dessert
- Comments
- A way for visitors to leave feedback on a particular post, allowing for a two-way conversation with customers. Because comments are publicly available, and allow anonymous input, you have direct access to delete any inappropriate comments.
- At times, comments can be blunt or even critical of your business. It's important to remember that all bloggers receive negative comments, and they are expected to increase as a blog grows. Negative comments can provide valuable insight into your customers' needs and wants, and how well you are meeting them. Use negative comments as an opportunity to address their concerns, and thank the reader for their input. Never delete them. These comments prove the authenticity of your blog and make its content more interesting.
- When creating a post, you can choose whether or not to enable comments for that post by un-checking the checkbox next to "Enable comments for this post?" LocalBizBlogs strongly suggests you enable comments for all posts.
- Excerpts
- When creating very lengthy posts you can choose to display them as excerpts. Excerpted posts will display only a portion of the entire post on the root page of your BizBlog, and the full post can be viewed by clicking the (more) link. This is useful for keeping your blog tidy and easy to navigate, and to prevent longer entries from hiding older entries.
- Post Types
- There are two types of posts, published and drafts.
- Published posts are immediately displayed in your blog and RSS feed. They can be updated, changed to a draft, or deleted at anytime.
- Saving a post as a draft allows you to store and refine your thoughts until you're ready to publish them. Drafts are not shown to the public and are only displayed when you are logged in.
- Both drafts and published posts are displayed in the order in which they were created.
- While logged in, you can sort posts by their type. By default, all posts will be displayed. To display only certain post types, just click the published or draft links, next to the "+ new post" button. This allows you to quickly see what posts are currently being displayed on your blog, and what posts you're currently in the process of developing.
