Summary

The editors of The Huffington Post -- the most linked-to blog on the web -- offer an A-Z guide to all things blog, with information for everyone from the tech-challenged newbie looking to get a handle on this new way of communicating to the experienced blogger looking to break through the clutter of the Internet. With an introduction by Arianna Huffington, the site's cofounder and editor in chief, this book is everything you want to know about blogging, but didn't know who to ask.As entertaining as it is informative,The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Bloggingwill show you what to do to get your blog started. You'll find tools to help you build your blog, strategies to create your community, tips on finding your voice, and entertaining anecdotes from HuffPost bloggers that will make you wonder what took you so long to blog in the first place.The Guide also includes choice selections from HuffPost's wide-ranging mix of top-notch bloggers. Among those who have blogged on HuffPost are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Larry David, Jane Smiley, Bill Maher, Nora Ephron, Jon Robin Baitz, Steve Martin, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ari Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Al Franken, Gary Hart, Barbara Ehrenreich, Edward Kennedy, Harry Shearer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam McKay, John Ridley, and Alec Baldwin.

Author Biography

The Huffington Post -- "The Internet Newspaper" -- was founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer in May, 2005, and quickly took the Internet by storm. The Huffington Post offers extensive coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, and "green." Its 24-hours news coverage regularly publishes scoops and is well-known for its high-profile contributors, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Welsey Clark, Ari Emanuel, Nora Ephron, Mia Farrow, Al Franken, Gary Hart, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, Bill Maher, Nancy Pelosi, John Ridley, Margaret Cho, Harry Shearer, and Alec Baldwin. The Huffington Post is a two time winner of the Webby Award for Best Political Blog. The Huffington Post is successful with an audience that is affluent, influential, educated, and tech-savvy.

Foreword
Introduction
The Nuts and Bolts of Blogging
Welcome to the World of Blogs
Getting StartedG??G??
Getting NoticedG??
Finding Your Voice
Community: Creating and Building ItG??
The Blog Revolution is Here! Be A Part of It
A Blog is Born: A Brief History of The Huffington Post and Its ImpactG??G??
How the Blogosphere is Remaking the MediaG??
The Huffington Post Resource Section
The Huffington Post Blogroll
Glossary of Blogging Terms
Website Resource ListG??G??
Best of the Huff
Post Blogs
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

CHAPTER 1 Welcome to the World of Blogs Blogging is the only addiction that won't make you fat, drunk or stoned. But it might make you so hungry for instant gratification that your books get shorter. -- Erica Jong, novelist, HuffPost bloggerYes, yes, we get the irony. We're writing a book about blogs. Where is the comments section? Where are the links? By the time you're thumbing through this at the bookstore several months will have transpired since we wrote these words. With no comments from readers. Or updates.But believe it or not, a book about blogging fits neatly into this juncture in communication history. You see, printed books themselves were once a rather revolutionary idea. Six hundred years ago, if people wanted to share ideas, they had few options. We could shout our complaints from the barn rafters. Maybe a few chickens would hear us. We could scrawl or draw our musings and post them in the town square -- but soon the elements would take their toll. Documents were preserved, of course -- medieval monks specialized in hand-copying important texts -- but to justify years of a monk's time, these documents had to be privileged indeed. Few normal people could spare five years to hand-write their stories.Then, in mid-fifteenth-century Germany, printer Johannes Gutenberg happened upon a discovery: By creating type pieces out of metal -- known as movable type -- and arranging them to form words, you could make multiple copies of a document far faster than a monk could write. Gutenberg's most famous creation was the Gutenberg Bible, but before long, people were using movable type to print science books, political commentaries, and other works that fundamentally changed the world.Fast-forward to 2001. Somewhere in California, a twenty-something woman named Mena Trott, laid off from her dot-com job, started keeping an online diary of her life. She called it Dollar Short (as in a day late and a...). She wasn't happy with the available online publishing tools. So she and her husband, Ben, decided to create their own. On October 8, 2001, they released their contribution to the nascent blogging software industry. You could download it free of charge (though donations to the Trott rent fund were certainly welcome). With a wink at the past, they called the software Movable Type.So there you have the blog/book connection: from movable type, to books, to booksonMovable Type. Is blogging as big a revolution as what Gutenberg started? Only time will tell. But since we at The Huffington Post like to report on news and history in the making, we'd like to help you, dear reader, get started on making some history of your own.What Is a Blog?A blog at its most fundamental level is simply a "web log." That is, a regularly updated account of events or ideas posted on the web.But calling blogs mere updated web diaries is a bit like calling poetry a pleasant arrangement of words on a page. There is an art to this. Those of us who work at HuffPost believe we are fortunate enough to be present at the advent of a new form of human communication -- one that is more interactive, more democratic, and just more fun than what has come before.Blogs can bring down a Senate majority leader. They can show what a presidential candidate talks about in unguarded moments. They can provide stay-at-home parents with a little space to rant about the tragedy of colic (or maybe share updates on a local environmental issue -- and Brad Pitt -- during naps). They cut out the gatekeepers of information and shorten the news cycle. They give companies new ways to communicate with customers and shareholders -- and give customers and shareholders new ways to make their voices heard. Blogging gives you a feeling of satisfaction that writing a letter to the editor, or a letter to the "customer care" department of a corporation,