Today, we are so excited about this new post written by one of our Blogging Workshop students, Paraskevi Antonopoulou. We can’t wait to see her next steps in the Academic & Research Blogging field.

Online Blogging Workshop

Opinion by Paraskevi Antonopoulou

I had the opportunity to attend the presentation of Mrs. Areti Vassou who has distinguished herself in the field of Web Design & Digital Marketing Strategy. She works in the field of SEO & Digital Marketing having founded the company SEO & Content Marketing Agency IDEADECO. Mrs. Areti Vassou aims to pass on her knowledge about blogging and the empowerment of women in this field.

In this intensive 2-hour blogging course, I learned the basics I need to follow and apply to create content with a specific purpose within a blog aiming at communication and information.

The first blog was created in 1994 by Justin Hall on Links.net and in 1997 the term “weblog” was first coined by Jorn Barger. In 1999 the Blogger platform was created by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan.

Blogging is part of our digital life

During the Blogging Workshop I had the chance to realize that it has a set of useful guidelines to follow and apply.

Whatever social media channel we have for communication, we have a familiarity with blogging.

In addition to communication and information, blogging aims to create content, advertise a product and promote content. Content creators are bloggers, or Publishers or Content Creators or Digital Copywriters. In essence, blogging is the vehicle that conveys the message to the audience to communicate with.

The content we create must be genuinely ours. After proper research for every piece of content we are going to create, we use keywords and phrases, create clever, imaginative, substantive titles, and remember that research precedes technology.

It is important to accompany our text with multimedia and photos, taking care to fill in all the fields in the description of the file, avoiding the use of inappropriate images that are extreme and aggressive. Photos have a very important role in establishing the content for reliability and validity.

Blogging Creativity Has its Own Rules

Regarding the structure of the text, we follow a standard structure of the text and check for any spelling or syntax errors, the content distribution flow, the title, and the URL. If everything is correct then our text is ready for publication.

We must keep in mind that 85% of visitors will browse our Blog, from a mobile phone or tablet. How we create our content greatly influences the browsing experience of visitors and the evaluation of our blog by search engines.

In case we create more than two new articles every week then we will need to have a Content Calendar. The Content Diary is very useful and helpful to keep the volume of our work in a steady flow and to have a clear plan of monthly action and movements so that we follow it faithfully without betraying the interest of our audience. It can be just a list in an office calendar with all the actions we want to do on each of our articles or it can be an extremely detailed digital calendar in Google Calendar or Google Sheets or Excel or some special App.

Apart from being a fun activity, blogging has unlimited possibilities for professional rehabilitation and development for anyone who wants it. More specifically, from creating content within blogs, publishing on paying platforms, microblogging through social media, content within Newsletters to creating a Brand as a professional blogger.

About Paraskevi Antonopoulou

Paraskevi is an active Environmentalist, a true visioner who advocates the protection of the environment. Find more about her published work at Research Gate and her LinkedIn account.

Blogging Workshop at SHA

Areti Vassou: Our two intensive Blogging Workshops at Social Hackers Academy have been successfully completed. The Workshops were part of the program “Women Going Digital” which was implemented with the support and funding of the Latsis Foundation. The program was designed by the Diotima Center, with long experience in women’s empowerment, and Social Hacker Academy, specializing in technological education.
 

During the Blogging Workshops the students learned how to:

• Create new content for their blog
• Apply keyword research
• Implement SEO best practices
• Adopt the best Content Marketing Strategies
• Brand Positioning for their blog
• Add different types of elements into their blog posts
• Get familiar with the blogging community & networking guidelines
• Explore potential blogging business opportunities

The main training goal was to enrich women’s digital soft & hard skills. According to research data, women are under-represented in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), facing difficulties both in their inclusion in the digital labor market and in their daily lives.

Blogging can support our efforts to create the life we want.

Once you decide to engage professionally then it pays off. When we are ready to let go of what is familiar in order to create a new chapter for us then we tend to open up in the wildness of the unknown. Offer your caring attention generously and you will be surprised how joy, happiness, and creativity will find ways to return back to you.

I am grateful for having the opportunity to teach new bloggers how to blog. They helped me to become a better listener and to reconnect with the joy of doing something new. I learned (again) how to ride my blogging bike. Thank you so much! – Areti Vassou, Founder of Ideadeco.co