British Parent Bloggers

Before we start the first blog lesson I just wanted to do a quick intro to this series. I’m no expert, I’ve been blogging for about 15 months now, probably less than some of the BPB members. During that time, I have however spent up to four and five hours a day emersed in the culture and learning about the various aspects. I’m also a member of a blog mentoring program (more on that later). I now want to impart some of this knowledge to those of you who like the idea of blogging but don’t know how to start. I hope it will also help the bloggers who are desperate for more visitors and readers, and the experienced bloggers who would like to leverage their blogs to make a little pocket money or publish a book or build a business from (or around) their blog.

I will be writing some of the lessons, I hope that a few BPB members will consider writing one on their area of expertise (don’t be modest!) and I will try and get some guest bloggers to write on the more advanced topics and techniques.

One thing you can be sure of; there will be no jargon, and if there is, please ask in the comments and we, as a group, will happily explain any of the terms to you. I think what we all want, and certainly what I want, is to encourage would-be bloggers to take the first step and join our little group.. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the language will be basic and the lessons will be ultra step by step, I’m going right back to my knowledge level 15 months ago, which was zero, so please don’t take these lessons in a patronizing way, in fact, I’d like all the already-bloggers to at least jump in with their own ideas and experiences. Thanks, and I hope this will be an interesting series where we can all learn something.

What is a blog?

This wikipedia (like an online encyclopedia) does a good job of explaining what a blog is.

So basically, a blog is a website. It differs from a website in that the content (ie the posts, also known as blogs) are written in chronological order. Blogs are usually written by individuals so they are more personal, or sometimes by small groups a bit like this blog. GNMParents is a good example of a group blog, they have several writers (also known as contributors) and they usuallly publish two or three articles a day. Bloggers aren’t necessarily professional writers, although a few are. You certainly don’t need to be a professional writer to have a blog.

Why should you be interested in blogs?

As I said before blogs are more personal. Let me use the parenting example;

We all know of a few big parenting related websites, they are quite good, very informative etc… but have you ever just wanted to ask another parent instead? Would you rather just ask a friend that is a parent about their ‘real-life’ experience? Because that is what blogging allows. Blogs are written by the likes of you and me (literally!), many of the BPB (short for british parent bloggers) member are blogs about parenting. They write about everyday experiences and often their readers (and fellow parents) share their own views via the comments. You can add your own comment to a blog post at the foot of that post. If you scroll down now it gives you the option to ‘post a comment’ - if you’re new to this, go ahead and have a go at leaving a comment, but remember it may take a little while to be published as all the comments are checked to make sure they are genuine and not spam.

So, in a nutshell, blogging is more of a community thing. Yes you say, a bit like forums, why do I need blogs when I am a member of a forum. Well, forums are fun, but you can’t add photos (to my knowledge) and it takes a lot longer to get to know people. I actually see blogging as a bit of an extension from forums, the principles are quite similar, ie leaving comments, communicating with like minded people, but as I’m about to show - there’s a lot more to blogging!!

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