TypePad® for Dummies®

Chapter 1. Understanding Blogging and TypePad

In This Chapter

• Getting familiar with your blogging community

• Establishing your blog's standards

• Sharing your blogging identity

• Understanding core blogging technologies

• Using search engine optimization techniques

• Choosing hosted or nonhosted blogging options

Before we move ahead with some technical TypePad how-tos, let's start at the beginning. If you're not an experienced blogger, this chapter provides a simple framework for you, explaining the basic social dynamics and technology of blogging. The definitions and concepts we introduce in this chapter are used throughout the book, so a solid understanding of them is helpful. If you've already been blogging for some time, feel free to skip ahead to the next chapter.

In this chapter, we help you understand the social dynamics of a blog — how it works and why people even do it in the first place. We discuss the idea of community — a key difference between writing for a blog versus writing for a book or magazine — and we offer considerations for managing this community. We also explain some of the fundamental technological elements of a blog (including RSS feeds and search engine optimization) and how you can harness these elements to create a successful blog. All these points work toward producing a polished, attractive, user-friendly blog that invites participation from readers.

Dynamics of Blogging

Even if you don't have a blog yourself, you probably at least read a few of them. You may already ...