An overview of why you should blog, blogging platforms, tips on writing and ideas for blogs, and promotion and tracking of your blog.

1. BLOGGING ZOMG!
Alex Miller

2. WHY BLOG?
External rewards
Get a job!
Get into conferences free!
Get free books!

3. WHY BLOG?
Internal rewards
Practice at writing, communicating, storytelling
Vetting your ideas
Visible body of work

4. WHERE TO BLOG?
Wordpress
Blogger
Posterous
Tumblr

5. SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING
Alex Gorbachev’s SyntaxHighlighter
Supported on most platforms (Google for how)
Gist embedding
Supported on Posterous, Blogger

6. WRITING
A single idea, closely examined
Tell a story
Make it personal
Help the reader be awesome
Break up long runs of text
Use relevant pictures / diagrams / tables / quotes / lists
Re-read and edit

7. IDEAS
Keep an idea file
If you have a hot idea, write it now
Persistent searches for news (Google alerts, Twitter)
Mailing lists
Other blogs - turn comments into blogs
Write a list post
Ask a question
Explain an error message (great for Google searchers)

8. GOOGLE SEARCH TIPS
Good title, good headers (keywords!!)
Tags / categories
Links
Site map (depends on software)
Metadata

9. GOOD LINKING
Link a topic once, either on first use or most
important use
Link frequently, but carefully
Use link length to direct focus
Link to bloggers you want to notice you

10. KEEPING READERS
Tags/categories
Date urls / links
Posts like this
Recent posts
Next / previous
Popular posts
Link to your own blog

11. ABOUT
Prominently display:
Name
Picture
Email / Twitter / contact info
Short bio

12. COMMENTS
Allow them!
Respond to them! (well, not all of them)
Spam control - Akismet, moderation, captcha
Allow comment subscription (return visits)
Gravatar - pictures with comments

13. PROMOTING
Blog aggregators - JavaBlogs, AllTop
Link-sharing - DZone, Reddit, Digg
Article re-posting - JavaZone
Mailing lists - Java Posse, user groups
Social media - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Stack Overflow

14. TRACKING
Google Analytics - traffic sources, searches, content
ewebcounter - one of many for real-time feedback
Technorati - blog rankings
WebsiteGrader.com - ranking, seo, etc

15. ADS
Google Adwords
Everything else
Direct relationships