BLOGS Audio, Video, Embedding Forms and Documents

Do you want a blog? Do you have time to update? 1-2 times a week minimum Do you have time to reach out to other blogs and social media? It’s social media, so you need to be social Visit other blogs with similar content, leave comments, link to them Reciprocity is the name of the game Hopefully they (and others) will link to you Cross-promote via Facebook, Twitter Do you have something to say? Is there a community out there that will find this information consistently useful?

Blog Basics Outreach In addition to visiting and linking to similar blogs/sites…. Make sure RSS feed is enabled and visible Put the URL on s, pamphlets, stationary, business cards Share useful information Be a concise, consistent, reliable resource Simple, effective design Pre-designed templates are very helpful for this Images One image per post is a good rule Be judicious, link content to imagery, attribute sources Lists! People LOVE numbered lists (e.g. 10 Great Things About Windows 7)

Blog Hosting Services Blogger ( From Google Easy to set up (almost instant!) Well designed templates available Wordpress (wordpress.com)wordpress.com Highly customizable Can have them host it, or host it yourself Learning curve slightly more steep than Blogger Tumblr ( More of a micro-blogging platform Popular with photo-blogs Xanga ( LiveJournal (

Starting Up Actual blog name (e.g. Technology Toolbox) Unique domain name (e.g. technotoolbox) Try to match title; might take a few tries to find a unique one Entire URL: Choose a template or theme Change it whenever you like Blogger Dashboard Wordpress Dashboard

Blogger and Wordpress Posting Blogger Wordpress

Video Two options for Blogger: Upload it yourself Need to be in Compose mode, not Edit HTML mode Click the video icon, and upload YouTube Owned by Google Automatically converts to Flash Hosted for free Go to YouTube video, copy and paste embed code into post (Edit HTML mode) Wordpress allows YouTube option only Upload your own with paid subscription or plugin Go to YouTube video, copy and paste embed code into post (HTML mode)

Audio Neither Blogger or Wordpress host audio They both did for awhile, both shut it down Podbean Podcast (audio blog) hosting service Free ( , username, password) Upload, then use embed code to post

Podbean 1 2 3

Google Forms Hosted from Google Docs Create the form How to: Open the form Form>Embed form in a webpage Responses instantly submitted to Excel-like spreadsheet on Google docs

Google Forms (con’t) It will probably be too wide Change code width attribute from “760” to “400” Loading... You can change height as well

Embedding Documents Upload document to Google Docs Open document Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF Click Share>Publish to the Web Copy-and-paste embed code into blog Add width and height attributes for more control E.g. width=“400” height=“900”

Issuu Converts PDFs, Word docs, PowerPoints to Flash Looks nice, easy to navigate, full screen option Upload, choose platform (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.), size, color, format, copy-and-paste code