Sandra Wendland

Blogging for content developers

Sandra Wendland

Sandra Wendland

?

• Who’s got a blog?

• Who is taking care of a work blog (either internally or externally)?

• Who is planning to set up a blog?

• Who started a blog but gave up after some time?

Sandra Wendland

From private to business blogging

• For myself

• For freelancers, ext. contractors

• For your employer

Sandra Wendland

Why blog?

• Provide online sample of writing skills.

• Learn about new technologies and keep up with development.

• Become a subject matter expert in your domain.

• Expand your network (private and business).

Sandra Wendland

Why WordPress?

• Open source and free.• Huge community and good support.• Lots of new features and bug releases per year.• Good separation between design and content.• Stable.• Good documentation.• Lots of plugins and design templates to choose

from.

Sandra Wendland

WordPress demo

Slugs, Permalinks, Trackbacks, Tags, Comments, Pages, Posts, Themes

http://www.chiperoni.org/wordpress

Sandra Wendland

Beyond the current blog hype

• Blogs are here to stay.

• BUT it’s not easy to write and communicate effectively…

• New opportunities for tech. communicators.

Sandra Wendland

Benefit for your freelance business website

• Enhance your business website. Blogging is a good way to make your business website less static.

Sandra Wendland

Content ideas I

• Best case: there‘s a hobby or situation or issue, which you‘ve been dying to write about all along.

Sandra Wendland

Content ideas II

• Point to interesting industry developments.• Voice your own opinion on a topic.• Publish short howto’s, code snippets, tutorials,

extensions, examples.• Link to relevant industry developments, which

you find during your daily Internet watch.• Keep online notes of your personal impression of

conferences / shows, or interesting websites.

Sandra Wendland

Establishing a business blog

• Focussed content

• Frequency

Sandra Wendland

Don‘ts

• Don‘t move into blogging: – If you don‘t enjoy writing.– If you‘re looking for fast money.

• Avoid typical marketing glib and press release speak.

Sandra Wendland

My very personal benefit

Sandra Wendland

Resources for business blogging

• Good starting point: Robert Scoble, Shel Israel „Naked Conversations“

Sandra Wendland

Discussion