Building a Web Presence for Your Virtual Practice
(the first in a series of how-to’s and tutorials to help you decide what web-based technologies make sense for your virtual holistic practice).
What is a blog, exactly?
Blog is short for “web log.” Not the most elegant name, but it’s here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
A blog is a website, just like any other website accessible through an Internet browser. Blogs many of the same basic technologies as many other websites you’ve visited. They have pictures, buttons, fill-in boxes, hyperlinks, etc. You can embed video clips, process customer orders, have people opt-in for newsletters – all the things you would expect to find on a fully-functional, high powered website.
Blogs are unique in how they organize content, especially content created by the owner of (and visitors to) the blog. Blogs are highly interactive. As you may know, blogs got started and became popular because they were a simple, easy way for a blog owner to create the equivalent of their own personal online newspaper or magazine. In fact, I was introduced to blogs through my good friend Jim Pire about the time of the second Gulf War. Residents of Iraq who had Internet access started posting blog entries that were many times more accurate (and compelling) than the late, often-sanitized news dispatches from the Western new agencies.
Blogs allow visitors to the site an opportunity to post comments about an article that the owner/author has written. I’m sure you’ve seen this feature in many websites (lots of “traditional” newspapers now allow readers to comment on articles posted.)
Blogs became popular in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s because they are so simple to set up and make functional “out of the box.” Also, the most popular blogging software (Wordpress, which I use) is free. You just download to a server, install it (which takes about 5 minutes), apply a theme (of which there are literally thousands to chose from, many of which are also free), and your now blogging. Posting is easy, responding to comments is easy.
Then, of course, it gets a lot more complicated after that , depending on what you want your blog to do for you, your business, and most important – your clients.
Next Post: The Pro’s and Con’s of Using Blogging Software for Your Site