Wednesday, July 15, 2015

20134 WRITE: BLOG: A dozen+ tips for building your blog about virtual worlds

Tips for building your blog about virtual worlds
Use the resources of hypertext, the web and virtual worlds to build readership for your blog

1.  Know your audience
2.  Write to your audience
3.  Write to catch and hold attention
4.  Post the search description if you can.
5.  Help the search engines to help you
6.  Use pictures, screenshots, graphics, and calendars to break up the text.
7.  If there is a lot there, tell the contents above the break 
8.  Plug in to content sources
9.  Use BOPs in your virtual world
10. Curate your content
11. Use social media
12. Signal what you want the reader to notice
13. Aim for fast loading

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(More after the break)
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News and Notes

SciFi Film Festival

  • Deadline for Regular submissions Midnight – 1 August 2015
  • Deadline for Late Submissions Midnight – 29 August 2015

Summer of Arts submissions open Monday on Metropolis

Scroll down for News, Notes, and Info



    1. Know your audience
    • Who are you writing to?   
    • Who will be interested in what you are writing about?
    • What people do you know that could be a readers of your blog?
    • What do they want to read about? 
    • Can you meet them and chat in your virtual world?
    2.  Write to your audience
    • What things will be most interesting to your readers? 
    • What words will catch the attention of your readers? 
    • What language style will be most familiar to your readers? 
    • What ideas and words are already familiar to your readers? 
    • What other sources are familiar to your readers? 
    • What does your readers want to know?
    • What can your readers do with the information you are providing?
    • Don't make up answers.  Ask people in your virtual world.

    3. Write to catch and hold attention

    4. Post the search description if you can. Blogger helps you with that.

    • When someone finds your post in search the description
    • will usually be under title-link listing.
    • Tell people why they want to read your post. 
    • Leave it out and the search engine will show something from your text.
    • Are you smarter than a search engine?

    5. Help the search engines to help you.  

    • Use words that people search for, those are your keywords
    • Put them in the title, the search description, and above the break.
    • Put keywords in the title, in the search description, and above the break.

    6. Use pictures, screenshots, graphics, and calendars to break up the text. 

    • Virtual worlds are visual. Take pictures.
    • If it is about a place in a virtual world, show it.  Ctrl+shift+S
    • If it is about the screen, use annotated screen shots.  Jing
    • If it is about something general or abstract, show an example.

    7. If there is a lot there, tell the contents above the break 

    • The break is the opening of an article.
    • The main page of a blog may carry the openings of recent articles.
    • The reader can look over the page and select articles for further reading.
    • Plan the outline.  
    • Title the sections.
    • Present the section titles above the break.  Use keywords here
    • "Above the fold" may be used in reference to paper newspapers.

    8. Plug in to content sources

    9. Use BOPs in your virtual world


    10.  Curate your content

    11.  Use social media

    12. Signal what you want the reader to notice

    • Use bold face or color or a special font 

    • to tell the reader what is most important.

    13.  Aim for fast loading

    • Slow loading loses readers
    • Use .jpg rather than .png unless you need high quality

    Related


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    News and Notes

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      How to handle a Hypergrid address in Firestorm



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        • For more on topics like this, circle Selby Evans in Google+ 
        • What do we do in Virtual Worlds? 
        • Search on page with Google Chrome: Ctrl+f, search bar upper right.
        • Google search this blog: Search bar, upper left--or:
        • Put site:virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com at the end of the search terms 
        • What is Second Life?
        • Annotated screen shots made with Jing
        • All original content on this blog is Creative Commons License, attribution only. 
        • Second Life, Linden, SLurl, and SL are trademarks of Linden Research Inc. 
        • This blog is not affiliated with Second Life or anything else. 
        • Ads are from Google.

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