School Of Sound Recording

Blog Writing & Making An Impact

What happens when a visitor first sees your blog?
They'll have a quick look to see if they're interested... And if not, they'll click the Back button.

How can you keep them a little longer?
You have just a few seconds to hold their interest. Some ideas:

Exciting Visuals
- Attractive images... But not too many
Simple, clear hyperlinks
Colour co-ordination
- 3 or 4 colours that go well together
A catchy slogan or tagline at the top
A good title for your top-most post
Make the first paragraph really interesting!
Don't write too much
Write compelling content!

Google AdSense Adverts

One way of making a little money from your blog is to include some advertising. Of course, you will only make money if you have visitors and if they are interested enough to click on the ads...

To get started with a Google AdSense accout, log into Blogger and click on Template and then AdSense, or visit adsense.google.com.

Take a look at the ads at the top of this page. Are they at all related to the content of this blog? Are they an outrageous eyesore and a mindless sell-out into the depraved pits of faceless capitalism? Or just a sensible way to make a few spare pennies? What do you think?

HTML Web Design

For those of you want to take your blogging further, you may want to learn some more HTML - the language of web pages.

We've already looked at including hyperlinks and images with HTML tags. If you'd like to hack into your Blogger template or build your own site from scratch, then perhaps its time to learn some more HTML.

Download these HTML notes, or visit its media page on Ourmedia.org to get started. A good reference website for using HTML is HTML Dog.

Marketing Your Project

Write a new post about it on your blog
Search Technorati.com for similar blogs and make a comment on them about your project with a link to your blog
Use BlogExplosion.com to connect with similar blogs
Make a post to band forums / music forums, e.g. the NME, playlouder.com
Provide a link to the new post on your blog, not the overall blog address
Keep an email list of people who want to be informed of your news

When making comments on other people's blog sites:

Be genuine
Be constructive
Be relevant
Don't spam & don't suck up!
Take an interest in what the blogger is doing and they may take an interest in what you're doing

Making images into links

To make an image into a link, just wrap the link tags around the image tag, like this:

<a href="WEB ADDRESS"><img src="IMAGE SOURCE ADDRESS" alt="ALTERNATIVE TEXT" /></a>

For example:

Making Links

To make a link in your HTML code:
<a href="WEB ADDRESS">LINK TEXT</a>

For example:
Enter the Dharmasphere

Making Images

Here is a photo of today's class:
SSR Web Design Class

The HTML tag for an image is:
<img src="IMAGE SOURCE ADDRESS" alt="ALTERNATIVE TEXT" />

Images can really brighten up a page or a blog post. You could your own photos or pictures, or collaberate with other artists who are happy to let you use their images.

Flickr.com is a good place to search for other peoples images. Make sure you ask permission from the artist to use anything you find. Most people are happy to share their work, as long as they are credited as the artist and no money is being made from it.

Play MP3s from your Blog

This little Flash player plays mp3's. It was made by Owen from Asymptomatic.

To Use This In Your Blog
Copy and paste the following code into your blog post. If you are adding this to a Blogger blog post, make sure you are in "Edit HTML" mode, not "Compose" mode.

Change both instances of the MP3_ADDRESS.mp3 to the address of your own mp3:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" height="15" width="128"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dharmasphere.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/AsySound.swf?MP3_ADDRESS.mp3"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src="http://www.dharmasphere.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/AsySound.swf?MP3_ADDRESS.mp3" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="15" width="128"></object>