Essentials of Blogging

Source: The CPA Journal

You don’t need technical skills to create a blog,  and the content can be whatever you want. Special software provides tools to manage your blog. The following sites can help you create your blog and get noticed: www.google.com/addurl.html, www.blogger.com, and www.blogarama.com. You can syndicate your blog by publishing the content in a standardized format such as Really Simple Syndication. This allows Web sites, newsreaders, and other blogs to present them in their own format.

Your blog can be used to interact with clients, and to communicate information about your services. You can decide if readers (e.g., those who register with you) are allowed to post comments on the site.

E-mail settings can list clients or others to be notified when you add something new to the blog.

There is some risk. Your blog software can become unavailable, and some free blog software adds advertisements.

Blogs must be updated frequently with valuable content or they may do more harm than good.

Blogs from which you can obtain information include;

          Accounting information published in newspapers—accounting.blogspot.com/

          Accounting topics in the news—www.accountingobserver.com/blog

          Sarbanes-Oxley news—www.insidesarbanesoxley.com/sarbanes_oxley_blog/

When using blogs as an information source, be sure to check who created the blog, since the content may not be subject to review.

A newsreader such as www.bloglines.com can help you determine which blogs you should search.      

From The CPA Journal, July 2005. For the complete article, click on the following link:

http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/705/perspectives/p12.htm.