English for Marketing Class Blog

Friday, March 25, 2005

How to syndicate your blog

Syndicating your blog means making the content available via an RSS feed. An RSS feed is a kind of link you put on your blog so that users can read your blog in a feed reader such as Bloglines. You can find the site feed for this blog at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. If you wanted to read the 40 or blogs created for this project, you'd normally have to visit each one in turn. This would take a long time. However, if you subscribe to the feeds of these blogs using a feed reader, you can view the content of all those blogs in a single window. It is therefore a much quicker way of tracking and viewing multiple blogs.

To put an RSS feed on your blog, first go to Settings and copy the URL you'll find under Site Feed. Then put the feed link in your blog sidebar by creating a link in your blog template.

To subscribe to a feed using Bloglines, you first need to set up an account. Once you have done that, go to the blog you want to subscribe to and copy the URL of the blog feed (right click on link and copy shortcut). Return to Bloglines and click on My Feeds > Add. Enter the blog feed URL and voilà, you've subscribed. Repeat for as many blogs as you wish to subscribe to. You can organise your feeds into folders (Choose action > Move to: New folder), in which case all the blogs in a given folder will be displayed in a single window.

I've tried to keep this explanation as simple as possible. To find out more about RSS, see this tutorial.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Yahoo! buys Flickr


flickr
Originally uploaded by jeffreyhill.
As most of you are using Flickr to post photos to your blogs, you might be interested to know that Flickr has just been bought by Yahoo!. Read this BBC article to find out more.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Blog Project Update

By today (March 18th) you should have done the following :

1. Signed up for a Blogger account.
2. Chosen a topic and created your blog.
3. Made a post introducing yourself and giving details of your topic.
4. Send the URL to Mr Hill.
5. Put a site feed link in your sidebar (8.30 group only).

You should be able to:

1. Post a photo on your blog using Flickr.
2. Place a link within a post.
3. Add links to your sidebar.

From now until the end of the course you should make a minimum of one post per week. You should also leave a comment on at least one other blog.

There will be a prize for the best blog in each group. The winning blogs will be selected by the class members.

Here are some ideas for posts.

1. Summarize an article relating to your topic giving your own opinion on it. You should add a link to the article and you can also include an short extract from the article.

2. Comment on a post which has appeared on another blog. You should add a link to the post (use the Permalink). You can also include a short extract, although this is not necessary.

3. Give your personal viewpoint on some aspect of the topic you are looking at.

4. Write a review of another blog or website relating to your topic. Make sure you include a link to the site.

5. Interview someone about your topic and post an edited version on your blog.

Tips

* Remember that the best blogs are personal. People want to hear what you think.
* Try to vary the types of posts you make.
* Keep your posts relatively short: 10 lines maximum.
* Use the spell checker.
* Visit some of the Marketing & Advertising blogs listed on the Class Blog to see what form posts take on these.
* Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Posting a photo to your blog using Flickr

1. Go to www.flickr.com
2. Sign up for an account
3. Click on UPLOAD PHOTOS
4. Select your photo(s) from your hard drive or other source
5. Click on UPLOAD button (bottom of page)
6. Add title and description and SAVE
7. Click on photo to display full-size version
8. Click on BLOG THIS PHOTO (at top of photo)
9. Configure blog to post to (= Blogger Blog)
10. Enter Blogger username and password
11. Select weblog and click on ALL DONE
12. Return to photo, add text of post and POST ENTRY

If you already have photos uploaded, you can skip to step 7.

NB. In order to select how your photo will be displayed:

1. Click on ACCOUNT PAGE (in menu at bottom of screen)
2. In Blogging section click on YOUR BLOGS
3. Click on LAYOUT and select layout
4. Click on USE THIS at bottom of page
5. Return to YOUR PHOTO PAGE (menu bottom left) to select photo to post

Monday, February 21, 2005

Class Project

Each student is required to create a blog based on an approved theme relating to marketing and advertising. The blog should provide an insight into the chosen topic and act as a forum for discussion.

We shall be using Blogger for this project as it is free, user-friendly and hosted.

All students must post at least one new entry to their blog each week. Posts must relate to the chosen topic and should contain original commentary. Quotes from other sources must be clearly identified and, wherever possible, linked to. Students must also post at least one comment per week on their classmates' blogs. These are minimum requirements and further posts/comments are to be encouraged. Students will also be responsible for responding to any comments posted by classmates (or the teacher) on their own blog.

A links list should be created on the blog with links to sites relevant to the chosen topic. Links may point to web sites, other blogs or articles.

Each class member is required to subscribe to all of the other class members' blogs using Bloglines, a news aggregator. This means that each blog will need an RSS feed, something which Blogger creates automatically.

This project will count for 50% of the 'contrôle continu' mark for S4.