Once your blog is set up, you can begin posting articles on it and build up your content (see the section on this site titled 'Build Your Blog.' In this post we will just be covering the basics of the Posting editor and how to use it.
The following is an image from Google images that shows the posting editor in use on a blog.
Add a clear, concise, descriptive title in the 'title' field. People searching online may come into your blog to read what you have to say based on your title alone, or they may avoid it because the title isn't descriptive enough, or is perhaps uninteresting, or unrelated to the topic. Notice for this blog I've chosen to make blog posting titles resemble college courses... 101, 204, 309, etc etc. Interesting, and yet concise and descriptive all in it's own.
Next there is a large field for you to type your article (post) into. We will go into writing your content in the section of the site titled 'Build Your Blog'.
It goes without saying:
But...
Use proper grammar, punctuation and spelling in anything and everything you type on your blog. Check, and double check before and after you post. You are sure to catch something. If people come onto a site with spelling errors and strange punctuation and grammar, they are sure to leave and not come back.
We will go into making your posts look good in another article, but for now, take notice of the buttons and options you have within the posting editor. You can change to a small variety of fonts (generally you should leave it at the default setting as it is the easiest and most professional looking font). You can also change font size (still I generally leave it at the default setting).
Use the B to put certain words in bold that you want to stand out from the rest, such as headings and important information. You can use the I for the same purpose to italicize your words, and the U to underline words.
You may also change the color of your words, but this is not recommended unless you have a specific reason. One example I can show you of this is on one of my sites CBSB, where I use red text to show what is scripture from the bible as opposed to what are my own words.
There is also a Link function that will allow you to select a word or words and link them to other sites.
You can use the picture symbol to insert one or multiple pictures via link or uploading straight from your computer (recommended). There is also a funny little page that looks like it's ripped in half, and we will go into this function in a later post.
You may use numbers or bullets, and choose right, left, center, or justified to move your text into a desirable position.
These tools I have described are available in the 'Compose' window. Take note now that there is also an 'Edit HTML' window. When in this window things may look a little strange. But if you ever go to embed a Youtube code or some other html code (which we'll go into in another post) then you will want to do that in the HTML window before switching back to the Compose window.
Below the form where you type your article there is a place to put 'Labels' otherwise known as "tags" in the online world. This is perhaps as important if not more important than writing the article itself, as we will go into in another article.
Label, or "tag" your article with key words that describe your article. If you're writing about training your dog to sit, then you might label the post: dog, sit, dog training, easy dog training, train your dog, train dog to sit, training a dog to sit, using treats, dog training video.
Perhaps you used videos and talked about using treats in the article, so you would tag those things too. Anything a person might type into a search engine relevant to your article, you should put in the labels box. Beware that only a certain number of labels are allowed, so you may have to delete the less important ones if you over-do it.
You can also click the blue 'Post Options' link and change some of the settings for this one post such as reader's comments, and posting the article right away (automatic) or scheduling it to post at a later or earlier date (which can be useful, and we'll talk about that another time).
When you're done with your post you can click 'Publish Post' and it will go live on your blog! If you want to save it for later to work on at a later date, click 'Save Now' and the post will be saved, but will not go online for others to see.
Lastly if you want to just see how your post will look online before you publish it, you can click 'Preview' and in a new tab or window you will get a preview of your post. Viola!
Remember, you can always go back and edit your post later if you have to add, remove, or change something.
Check out our other articles to learn more about blogging, making money from blogs, and making great content!
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