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February 27, 2006Blogging Glossary Of Terms
At a recent panel discussion at the Yankee chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators the panel was asked to provide definitions of blogging terms. I thought this round up of some of the terms we discussed would be helpful. Let me know if you would like me to add anything to the list.
Archives
Archives contain links to past blog entries, such pages are ordered by month, week or day. Daily calendars also exist for archives.
Archives are extremely important to blog readers, especially when a blog reader visits a new blog for the first time. The age and size of an archive will go someway to convincing that its worthwhile maintaining a connection with a new blog.
Blogger
Someone who writes or authors a blog.
Blogroll
Lists of links to favorite bloggers on a blog, such links are usually displayed in the side navigation.
Categories
Bloggers use categories to characterize each blog post. Using keywords and phrases for categories a blogger can build a body of work around a particular theme. Bloggers find this navigational tool useful in making it easy to find past articles around a subject, and blog readers use categories to find posts of interest.
Comments
Blogs are a design of website that allow a lot of interaction between the writer of the blog, and the blogger’s audience. A comment dialog box allows a blog reader to make a comment on a blog post. Due to the increasing volume of comment spam, many bloggers moderate their comments before publishing them.
Comments are just as important to a blogger as their blog posts. Blogging is about dialogue and the opportunity to interact with your audience is paramount.
Consumer generated media
All of the electronic content generated by consumers on websites and the Internet, including email list serves and forums, such content was highlighted by the growth of blogging since the turn of the 21st century. However in 2006 the vast majority of consumer generated content exists on websites other than blogs, including forum sites.
Companies like Cymfony, Umbria and BuzzMetrics provide analysis and monitoring of Internet generated consumer generated media.
The phrase also relates to the cultural rise of consumer generated media as a contrast to traditional media in print, radio and TV, where professional journalists produce content for an audience’s consumption.
Entry
Blogs are powered by powerful content management systems that allow even non-technical people to build a web page. Once a web page is written and entered into the content management system, the blog author publishes the page onto the web. Bloggers call the process of publishing the web page ‘posting’ and the page itself is an ‘entry.’ An entry can also be called a blog post or article.
Post
What’s a post?
Blogs are powered by powerful content management systems that allow even non-technical people to build a web page. Once a web page is written and entered into the content management system, the blog author publishes the page onto the web. Bloggers call the process of publishing the web page ‘posting’ and the page itself is a ‘post.’
RSS
What Is RSS?
Today, I was asked the question what is RSS? It occurred to me that many people are not familiar with the term or understand how the technology works between websites and web visitors, so I thought I’d discuss the issue.
RSS or really simple syndication is not as you might think an example of stick man cartoons being syndicated through national newspapers but the syndication of one website’s content to another website or RSS feed reader.
As you are reading this post, a number of other visitors are reading this same post through their RSS feed reader. Bloglines.com is an example of a web based RSS feed reader.
The advantage to the visitor who is using an RSS feed reader is that you know if the content on a website or blog has been updated without actually visiting the website. RSS feed readers are designed in such a way that the visitor can review a large number of feeds all at the same time. Some people have 50, 100, or several hundred feeds in their feed reader. The design is much more efficient than email, in that typically an email user does not know when they are going to receive an email, for example a monthly newsletter, but with RSS the visitor can ask for the content when they are ready to receive the information. RSS makes the process of monitoring content updates much more efficient. An RSS feed can be used by a visitor or website to request for updates to a website on a periodic basis or when a visitor returns to their feed reader.
What’s interesting is that the demand for content from publishers increases with RSS, instead of cursing more regular email newsletters than once a month, an RSS feed reader might begin to question the same content provider’s ability to produce content when they are not writing every few days.
The marketing opportunity is that your customers will be more likely to read your content, as you can break up the content into chucks over time, and also the RSS reader is able to see more content then they could ever do before.
Trackback
How To Send A Trackback Successfully
Today I was asked how to send a trackback successfully to another blog by blogger who has not used the technology, I wrote this post to describe how she can use trackbacks in her blog.
The best way for a blogger to alert another blogger that he has mentioned his work in a blog post is to use a trackback. Trackbacks send a notification to a blog that another blogger has written a post about their blog article. To send a trackback, a blogger has to copy and paste a trackback url from a blogger’s article into the ping field of a blog content management system. Once the blog post and trackback ping is published the blog content management system notifies a ping server that the page has been updated. The ping server then notifies the blogging system of the blog from the original trackback that a trackback has been sent from another blog. A trackback link will then appear underneath the post on the original blog.
There is an increasing amount of trackback Spam from malicious blog Spammers, and so many blogging publishing systems allow bloggers to monitor trackbacks before deciding whether to publish the trackback.
Search engines give higher rankings to those websites have more links from relevant websites. Trackback Spammers send trackbacks to attain more links in order to get higher rankings on search engines and receive direct traffic. The correct etiquette in using a trackback is to reference in your post a blog post where you wish to send a trackback. Commenting in your own blog article about a blog article on another blog where you wish to send a trackback will increase the likelihood that a blogger will publish a trackback on their blog.
Successful trackbacks like successful blog marketing can only be achieved if a blogger understands that he is having a dialogue with other bloggers. Merely targeting other blogs for links will not only get your trackback deleted but may also give you a reputation for Spamming amongst your industry’s community of bloggers. Don’t send a trackback unless you wanted to comment indirectly through a trackback on a blog post, or you wish to reference some information provided by a blogger’s article on his blog. Only send a trackback if your post is relevant to the other blogger’s article. Lastly, definitely do not randomly send trackbacks to a blogger’s article when your own article does not even reference their post, or has nothing to do with the content on another blogger’s blog.
Posted by johncass at February 27, 2006 4:35 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://tmpmt.backbonemedia.com/mt2/mt-tb.cgi/417
Comments
Excellent post John. Very informative. You might want to add a permanent link to this post on every page of this blog so that people can easily reference it.
Posted by: Fard Johnmar at February 28, 2006 1:52 PM
Fard, thanks for the feedback and good comments. Excellent suggestion on the perm link. Though I think I should also put some more terms on the list.
Posted by: John Cass at March 1, 2006 12:59 AM
This is interesting and helpful.
I still don't get your explanation of trackback because I don't know what a ping field is. I often comment in my blog about things I've read on other people's blogs. I usually insert a link to that person's post. If I understand you correctly, that link is not a trackback. Am I right?
Posted by: Susan Weiner at March 5, 2006 8:28 PM
Hi Susan, I think you might have a blogspot blog from Google. Those blogs don't come with trackbacks enabled automatically. HaloScan provides a free trackback service for bloggers. http://www.haloscan.com/. Many blogspot bloggers use their service. Or if you are willing to pay for your blog you might consider Six Apart's typepad service. I believe you have to select the $100 service or above to have trackbacks enabled. Another alternative is to host a wordpress blog, wordpress is free, but if you are not very technical, that might not be the solution for you.
Once you are set up with a trackback service on a blog. You will find a field called the trackback ping box integrated into the blogging publishing system. Copy and paste a trackback url from another blogger's blog into that field. Once you publish the post, you blog will ping a ping server, which will then notify the other blogger's blog of your post's reference to the their post.
Posted by: John Cass at March 7, 2006 11:14 AM
