Blogging is About Writing – and Not

Blogging is about writing. That is a fact. You can video blog, podcast, and do all kinds of fun things with your blog, but it is the writing that makes or breaks a blog. What you say in the blog posts, descriptions of visual and audio elements, and what words you offer search engines for their indexing to help people find your blog.

However, blogging is not just about the writing, albeit it is a large part. Blogging today is about so much more. Are you ready? Do you know all the things you have to know about blogging before you start blogging? Or after?

Whether you are a new blogger or long time blogger, these are the things you are going to have to learn about in order to blog in today’s world.

Copyrights are Your Rights

Ask First Copyright badge - by Lorelle VanFossenWhen you publish something, anything, on the web of your own creation, it is copyrighted. You own it. You control it. What you choose to do with it is up to you. How it is used by others is also up to you.

A blogger today doesn’t just concentrate on creating original content, though they should. They spend time making sure no one steals their content through autoblogging and feed scrapers. Readers and fans send them emails and leave comments warning them of plagiarism and copies of their blog posts they find elsewhere. It’s a growing industry to copy and make money from the hard work of others, and only the scraper benefits.

It’s not complicated to protect your content, but it does require some specific steps that you can break down into manageable tasks do do daily or weekly to stop content theft. When you protect yourself, you are also protecting hundreds or thousands of others. It’s my dream to have an Akismet-style, community action response splog and scraper blacklist that we can all contribute to, but until then, we have to do this ourselves.

I recommend you read What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content, and Jonathan Bailey’s fantastic articles, 5 Content Theft Myths and Why They Are False and The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft for the basics of copyright as it applies to blogging, and follow their links and resources for more information. Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today covers this topic extensively.

It is your responsibility to learn how copyright works and doesn’t work for you. You need to know and decide what is allowable for usage of your content, and how to copy others’ content within the Copyright Fair Use restrictions and limitations so you don’t plagiarize someone’s hard work.

Publishing

Blogging is about publishing. It is about making your work public. It is about exposing your writing, photography, artwork, video, poetry, stories, and creative expression to the world. And it’s a big world.

As a publisher, you have rights and responsibilities for what you publish beyond copyright protection. If you defame, harass, libel, or publish anything that hurts another by national and international laws, you can be held responsible and penalties can be taken against you. In some countries, this could mean imprisonment or worse.

Learn what your country’s laws are concerning censorship, publishing, and editorial content. Some countries protect bloggers under Journalist laws and regulations. Most don’t. Find out if the laws in your country will protect you or bust you for breaking them. Then learn about the international laws as a blog can be read by anyone, anywhere, anytime. If your blog’s content crosses borders, you may be libel in that country.

Soon, international Internet laws will be in place that prevent and protect web users as well as bloggers. Keep watch and pay attention to the changes and evolution of these laws so you can have a say in how much control you want your government to have over the web – or not.

For more information on blogging rights, see:

Blogging as a Business

Business of Blogging graphic - copyright Lorelle VanFossenThe moment you say to yourself that you want more blog traffic or you put an ad on your blog, your blog becomes a business. As a business, you need to know about business and how it works.

When you blog for business, you need to know public relations, marketing, advertising, merchandising, demographics, accounting, and other business skills and practices. A blog can be a part of your business, or it can be the driving force of your business marketing. Either way, you have to know about business if you include your blog in business activities.

There are many sites and blogs offering extensive information on the business of blogging. A few of the most popular include:

See Also
woman in black long sleeve shirt sitting on brown wooden chair

Blog Design

As much as your blog is about your blog content, it’s about your blog’s design. A lot of work goes into the pretty as well as the functional on a blog, taking you into areas of code and design criteria way beyond words.

While you may fuss and fidget with a text widget to get a set of links, pictures or words to line up just the way you want them to appear in your sidebar, professional web designers are fussing over every pixel of space in front and behind a web page design.

Some top blogs about web design you may want to learn from and follow include:

The Art of the Blog Conversation

It isn’t about what you write on your blog. It’s about the blog conversation. It’s about what other people write on your blog, too.

Many of us are still writing as if we were writing for our sixth-grade teacher, writing in complete sentences, complete thoughts, and fussing over every spelling and grammar error potential. These are not writings that encourage a conversation. They complete one.

In order to be a part of the blog interactive community, it’s about starting a conversation, not finishing one, with your blog.

Some top blog conversation teachers and experts and articles to learn from are:

What Did You Have to Learn About Blogging That You Didn’t Think You’d Have to Learn About Blogging?

If you have been blogging for a while, what have you had to learn about that you didn’t think you’d have to learn about when you started blogging?

Feeling stuck in self-doubt?

Stop trying to fix yourself and start embracing who you are. Join the free 7-day self-discovery challenge and learn how to transform negative emotions into personal growth.

Join Free Now

Picture of Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.

RECENT ARTICLES

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

If you really want to flourish in your 60s and beyond, say goodbye to these 7 self-sabotaging behaviors

If you really want to flourish in your 60s and beyond, say goodbye to these 7 self-sabotaging behaviors

Global English Editing

4 Zodiac signs that can sense a person’s true intentions before they even speak

4 Zodiac signs that can sense a person’s true intentions before they even speak

Parent From Heart

8 subtle things narcissists do to make you feel like you’re the problem

8 subtle things narcissists do to make you feel like you’re the problem

Global English Editing

5 zodiac signs who become more beautiful and confident as they get older

5 zodiac signs who become more beautiful and confident as they get older

Parent From Heart

If your goal is to age more slowly, say goodbye to these 8 specific behaviors

If your goal is to age more slowly, say goodbye to these 8 specific behaviors

NewsReports

5 zodiac signs who become classier and more refined as they age

5 zodiac signs who become classier and more refined as they age

My Inner Creative