The purpose of this document is to explain how to Create a Blog within the Ashworth Community. Although each member can create a personal Blog, we strongly encourage members to contribute their posts to their respective Group Blog(s). Each Group Blog provides a platform for your posts to be seen throughout the Community and get a lot more feedback from Community members than if you simply post to a Personal Blog that not many members will see.
For instance, if you're blogging about something that's related to Brides and Weddings, you would post to the Bridal Consulting Group Blog. If you're blogging about how about you balance life, work, family, and school as a single mom, you would post to the Parents Group Blog.
Here are some general topics you can contribute to your Group Blog related to your field of study/career field:
- Discuss what motivated you to pursue educational advancement/career training in this field. What are you learning from your related Ashworth Program? What are your academic/career goals after graduating? What motivates you to pursue these goals?
- Share your personal experiences working in the field and what you've learned from these experiences.
- Pick a current trend and provide your perspective on how the trend is impacting your field.
- Provide a link to a news story related to your field that caught your attention. It could be a really informative news story with great advice or simply something entertaining that you think other Group members would enjoy. Tell us why you find the story interesting and encourage other users to share their opinions.
- Are you enjoying your experience in the Ashworth Community? Have you made some new friends along the way? What tips or advice do you have for new student just joining your Group?
- These are just some general ideas to consider, but the bottom line is that we want you to have fun with your blogs and simply be yourself. I think you'll be surprised by how many Community members share similar backgrounds and ambitions.
Follow these steps to create a blog:
Go to the Group Listings Page to choose what Group you want to blog for. You may be a member of several Groups, so simply choose the Group most relevant to the given topic that you're blogging about.
After selecting a Group, you'll be taken to the Group Home Page. Click on the Blog tab.
You'll be taken to the Group Blog Page. Click on the Green Actions Bar and then click on Create a blog post.
You're now at the page where you'll create your blog post. Give your blog a catchy title that will grab people's attention and also describe what your blog is going to be about and begin entering your blog content.
In order to make your blog more visually appealing and dynamic, it's always a good idea to add a picture or embed a video.
To add a picture, place your cursor where you want to embed the picture. Click on the Camera icon, which will bring up the following screen.
Upload a photo file directly from your desktop or embed a photo from the web by inserting the photo URL.
To embed a video, click on the Video icon, which will bring up the following screen.
You can either upload a video file of your own from the desktop or embed a video from a popular video sharing site such as YouTube. You'll most likely be embedding a video from somewhere like YouTube in most cases.
Tag your blog with keywords relating to your post. This will make it easier for members to search for your blog in the Community and also help promote your blog throughout the web.
When you're ready for your blog to be published in the Community, click on the Publish button. You can also Save your blog if you'd like to continue working on it at a later time.
