Go Forth and Blog

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Go Forth and Blog

• Marianne Kruppa
• Web Developer Librarian
• St. Joseph County Public Library
• m.kruppa_at_sjcpl.org

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Whats a blog?

• An online diary
• The quickest way to get the word out
• A community builiding tool
• A syndication tool

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Whats a library blog?

• An online diary aka Library Newsletter
• The quickest way to get the word out
• A community builiding tool
• A syndication tool

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How are libraries using blogs?
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Where do I start?

• Is a blog really what you need?
• Just one, or many?
• What will it be about?
• Who will write for it?
• Hosted by library or 3rd party?
• Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Six Apart software
  (Movable Type, Vox, Livejournal)
• How can I tell whos reading it?

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Is it really that easy?

• If you can use Word, you can blog
• If you can copy and paste, you can blog

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I have a blog! Now what?

• Get the word out
• Add recent blog posts to your main page
• Add the url to printed materials
• Start a buzz campaign
• Double check that its accessible

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Feed2js
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Watch your community grow

• In person youll hear, I saw this on your
  website and
• Open up comments and discussions will happen

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GameBlog slide
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Trackbacks, pingbacks, and spam! OH MY!

• Trackbacks and pingbacks let your blog know that
  other blogs are talking about it.

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Spam work arounds

• Have your users register to comment. A bit more
  work at the get go, but curbs spam exponentially
• Use captchas to fend of spam bots
• Register with Akismet
• DO NOT close comments. Modern blog software makes
  it easy to delete unwanted comments.

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Go Forth and Blog!

• Questions?
• email m.kruppa_at_sjcpl.org
• AIM sjcplskagirlie
• blog http//blog.skagirlie.net/