How to write a Blog Entry
Title – Make it brief and catchy in such a way that it effectively attracts a visitors’ attention and arouses their curiosity towards the subject matter. Using popular catch phrases and references is common practice (“To kill a dying bird”) or you could highlight the keywords of the article (5000 Tigers Are Missing).
Body – This is where the main composition of your blog post should be posted i.e. the introductions, facts, figures, your arguments, quotations etc. Should you wish to share a presentation or a video sourced from another site, then you must copy the embed code from the sourced link and paste it on the body of the article, wherever you’d like it to be placed. While quoting or referring to an article, video, campaign etc. on a website or a blog, it is a good practice to hyperlink the source of your information. Your argument will gain substantive strength making your article credible to be cited in other blogs and websites as a reference as well as to be widely shared on social networking platforms as mass opinion.
Attachments (pictures, videos, slideshows) – All text in an article can get monotonous and multimedia elements bring colour and a wider audience to the fore. However, take precaution in titling and crediting it. If the product belongs to you, by all means credit it under your name. However, if you are reposting content from other sites or users, make sure to give copyright credit to the owner as well as a link to their website or work display profile on any other site. Do read Halabol’s ‘Terms of Use’ here.
Tagging – The most important part of the blogging experience is to appropriately tag it with the right keywords and terminologies that have been used in the blog post or are strongly related or connected to it. For e.g. if your blog piece is on wells drying up and the lack of tubewells in a remote village, you may use tags like “save water”, “water conservation”, “rural life” etc. Tagging helps in directing traffic from search engines for specific keyword results to websites and blogs like this one.
Categorizing under Issues/Campaigns – Besides you doing us a world of favour by helping the Halabol team to categorize precious and valuable content into their respective issues, YOUR articles and blog pieces will add bring YOUR campaigns higher up in support, awareness and change by many notches!