Embedded Files
Create a Blogger Account
Create a blog on Blogger
Write an effective blog post according to best practices
Insert hyperlinks into a blog post
Insert pictures and videos into a blog post
Create a POWr Account to connect social media accounts
Insert social media links using a gadget/widget to blog
Share your blog post on the class Facebook group
Blogs - short for "web log" - is an important part of communication and social media today. Although blogs have been around for a long time, they are still fundamentally important to a business' online presence.
A blog is a website that has regular updates and allows readers to engage the author by leaving comments. You will learn how to use Blogger, one of the most popular hosted blog sites, to create a blog and write a blog post. Writing a blog post is a real skill that takes time to develop. Your blog needs to be interesting, engaging, and informative. Using images, links, and videos can help improve your blog's appeal. Keep in mind that people have very short attention spans, which requires you to captivate them with a catchy title and intriguing first sentence to entice readers to continue reading.
A simple Google search for "how to write a blog" or something similar will provide you many good results. In you blog post, you will be evaluating these sites and putting together your own best practices blog post.
Read and review all the links in this section.
Setup Blogger Account
Blogger is Google's blog software. In order to use blogger, you will need to have a Google account. You may use your school account or create a new gmail account. See video on how to create a Google account for Blogger.
It is up to you if you want to use your existing Google account, create a new one, or use your UH Google account. Whichever you choose, be sure to stick with it for the entire semester. You blogs should all exist on one account
How to Write an Effective Blog
You may also search the Internet for resources on how to write an effective blog.
Create a Blog and Write a Blog Post
Create a Blog using Blogger on "Social Media and Collaboration Tools" (You may edit the name to your liking).
You will be creating a number of blogs to review, summarize and recommend social media sites and collaboration tools.
This first blog post
You will write additional blog posts throughout this course. Keep in mind, you will have one blog in this course with multiple blog posts.
Do NOT create separate blogs for each post.
Activity - Blog
Requirements:
Using Blogger, write a blog post for your "Social Media and Collaboration Tools" blog (your blog name may be slightly different) that summarizes information on "how to write and create an effective blog."
The objective is to pull ideas and information from a variety of sources and create an easy to follow guide for people new to blogging.
Your blog will be graded using the blog rubric at the bottom of this page.
Your blog should be a between 200 - 500 words.
Include links (2-3), pictures (2-3), and videos (2-3) that add credibility to your blog (see rubric). Adding videos to the end only can be detrimental to your blog
At the end of your blog post, link an example of a well written blog and explain why it is well written.
See POWr below
Tips:
Do not steal other ideas, but instead build on what they have said and give them credit by linking to the website where you found the information.
Do not just add videos or links to blogs. Be sure to tell people why they should visit the site to add credibility to your site, not to visit their site for information. You may lose your followers or people may not come back to your blog.
When using POWr, be sure to remove other social media links that you do not have or do not plan to connect.
Activity Cont. - Adding POWr
POWr Widget - Sign up and include links to your social media accounts using the POWr Widget.
This is required to appear/be visible on each blog post you write for the course.
For our blog, you will link to your social media accounts.
If this was for a business, these links would link to the business' social media sites. Setup the links for email and Facebook. We will add in other links as we cover various social media sites later in the semester. Keep in mind, these links are different from the share links at the bottom of the page. The share links allow people to share your blog on their own social media. The POWr links provides users links to the company's (or author's) social media page/profile.
See a step by step tutorial below. Click the top right icon to enlarge and/or download the tutorial.
Creating POWr.pdfFB Group Sharing
Share your blog post on our Facebook Group Review how to post a link to a Facebook group.
Include a short message that entices readers to click on your link (5 points).
On Facebook, comment on two other students' postings and provide meaningful feedback on their blog.
Use #blogin your FB post.
Blog Rubric - Click the top right icon to enlarge and/or download the rubric
Blog Rubric.pdfPage updated
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