Remember the water cycle from elementary-school science? How rain creates snow that melts into streams, feeding the oceans, which evaporate into clouds that rain and so forth? Bloggers, website publishers and the mainstream media are all bound together in a similar circuit. And readers too play a key role...
As Greg Ruggiero of the Immediast Underground says: "Media is a corporate possession... You cannot participate in the media. Bringing that into the foreground is the first step. The second step is to define the difference between public and audience. An audience is passive; a public is participatory. We need a definition of media that is public in its orientation."
This week we'll explore some bells and whistles to engage the reader, as well as tech and tactics to convert casual skimmers into a dedicated audience.
- Profile tactics – Look Who's Talking
- Single author versus group submissions
- Dynamic Sidebars
- Widgets Away!
- Widget wisely and well...
- Comments: More than the sound of one hand clapping
- Building community – or not...
- Exposure – yours, interviewees' and readers'
- Who's reading?
- Your mission, week four
Unusually, we've broken key homework components into Tips & Tricks this week. That's because some of you are on WordPress and others don't get a geek buzz off advanced html wizardry. Given all that, it seemed more sensible to quarantine the codey bits. But you can read 'em here:
- Tips & Tricks: Tell Google About Your Blog
- Tips & Tricks: Adding Google Analytics to your Blogger blog
Some of you expressed frustration with links. Just a quick reminder: these serve like footnotes – opportunities to dig deeper, but not obligations. And you can open them in another tab by clicking and holding down the apple-splat key (Mac) or control-click on a PC.
Assignment: Add Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and make two posts
Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment