What is a Blog?
A Blog is, in general terms, an internet based journal of information. Originally set up as a simple online journal or personal diary, a blog was really a log of thoughts and a personal means of expression online. Blogs have evolved dramatically since the first blog in 1997, and are now used for a wide range of topics – the most popular being news and media, but also including business, charities, arts, sports and politics and many more. Blogs often link to other website articles and sources of information. You can do blogging online about your daily life, to share recipes, community information, family life, your hobby or really anything at all that you can think of.
The word Blog is actually an abbreviation for Weblog or Web log.
How Blogs Began?
Blogs were at first created in a very basic format, and were generally just pages of information which you could read through. With the introduction of Web 2.0 software in 2004 blogs become much more highly interactive and sophisticated. As a reader, you could now post your own opinions and comments and in that way contribute to the blog at any time.
With this user interactive feature, there are some pluses and minus. As a blog owner you need to monitor the comments on your blog constantly. While positive and constructive comments are great and can help your business immensely, negative or derogatory comments need to be removed. Therefore you will need to review and edit your blog regularly.
Some Facts about Blogging Online
Blogs are designed to be updated regularly, so that you can receive up to date and current information – ideally every day. You can blog about your daily life, about your passion or hobby, or about business or other topics. Blogs can be a small personal web journal with only half a dozen readers, or a huge site such as an online newspaper with millions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of professionals employed.
A blog is always dynamic: it is constantly being edited, updated and changed.
A Blog, or online journal, contain multiple entries (also known as posts) and are in reverse chronological date order. The current entry is shown first and older entries appear further down the page. Topics of your blog can be in any order. They can be related or unrelated.
Originally blogs were used for people to write about their day to day lives. A personal account of your life, if you will. Now they are also a must have business tool and a major means of marketing. There can be direct links on the blog to monetize it or free giveaways to capture leads. There are over 100,000,000 blogs currently online.
Differences between Blogs and Websites
Blogs are different from traditional websites because:
- They are updated often, generally at least three times a week
- They allow for readers to contribute
- They are often included in social media such as facebook and twitter
Blogs generally:
- Have categories
- Have menus to navigate with
- Have posting categories
- Are on a single page of entries, with links to other pages
- Contain archives
- Can contain images, text and video
- Link to other web pages
- Are written on a specific topic, called a niche
- Are a type of unedited expression
- Are public – anyone can see them
- Are an online journal
- Are an instant publishing tool
- Can be novice journalism
Advantages of Blogging Online
Blogs are great for your question and answer sessions, coaching, forums, news content and how-to articles. They are a brilliant way for you to communicate with the world on one or many topics. You can spend as much, or as little time on your blog as you like and can work on it at any time.
In comparison a website’s contents may be rarely changed. A website always has a hosted domain name ie facebook.com. Blogs may be part of another domain name ie www.medium.com/Janek. Organizations will often have a website and a blog, and the blog may be linked to the organization’s website.
Bloggers create around 42.6 million new posts each and every month, which create around 409 million views. From the new blogs around 63.8 million new comments are given each and every month. What a marketing tool for your business! Really, how could you be without a blog?
Blog Structures
Blogs generally contain a header which consists of an image that shows the blog name – ie Fred Flinstone’s blog or Martha’s Gourmet Foods. After this there is a slogan which describes the purpose of a blog.
The content area is the area where the main content of the blog is shown. This is where any text, video and pictures are entered by yourself as the blogger, and by your readers.
Footers display copyright information, information about the blog and details of who operates the blog.
Blogging Online – Terminology
- Blogging is a word for writing a blog post
- A Blogger is the person writing the blog
- A Blogosphere is the online community of blogs and bloggers.
Software for Blogging Online
When blogs were first created, you needed a high level of technical and programming knowledge as a blogger. When blogs began to gain in popularity, software was introduced so that you could easily create blogs without any programming knowledge at all. This happened back in 1997.
Popular Software now used to create blogs – both small and large – includes Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger and Medium. You can generally use these platforms for free, and your blog can be hosted on the platform’s domain for free – ie your domain could be jacksmith.wordpress.com. You can choose to pay for your own domain if you wish and still use the software. The possibilities are endless.
Blog History
The first basic blog was started in 1994 by college student Justin Hall. The webpage was www.links.net. Here Justin shared his ideas and favourite links online. The website is still in existence today and regularly updated. Justin has created an online journal of strong and meaningful positive messages of gratitude and peace on this site. The site is quite basic and contains text, video and links to other articles. Wearable Wireless Webcam (wearcam.org) was another early blog, an online shared personal diary which used text, video and pictures. This blog is also still in use and updated regularly.
In 1997 more people began using personal websites to communicate and the phrase weblog was created. The term was shortened to blog in 1999 by programmer Peter Merholz.
In the early days of blogging there was no such medium as Facebook or any of the other social media sites that are commonly used today. Sites such as Xanga, Blogger and LiveJournal were used and blogging was private.
In August 1998 the Charlotte Observer covered a news story about Hurricane Bonnie in North Carolina in a blog, to get the story out to the public as quickly as possible. A large team of reporters were sent to cover the story. Several times each day reporters gave electronic reports which were posted online along with information obtained by telephoned. The website was updated every half an hour all week and broke records for viewed webpages.
After this story broke out blogging very swiftly began to gain in popularity.
Between 2001 and 2003 Moveable Type and WordPress blogs were created. The first large company to create an affiliate program was Amazon.com, which allowed people to earn an income from their blogging and work part time, or full time online. In 2003 Google Adsense was also created. This paved the way for everyday people to start earning a living through blogging and the internet.
More and more media began using blogs as a source of instant communication. Huffington Post is the biggest online blog, covering an average of 1,000 stories per day. By 2007 95% of US newspapers were using blogs to deliver their news stories.
Currently more than 400 million people read news and other informative blogs each and every day.
Blogging Online – Famous Blogs
The Huffington post has approximately 110 million readers each month and is the world’s largest blog.
It publishes articles found elsewhere by collecting the articles and publishing them on its domain. Employees write content and find content from other sites. The site covers news, politics, business, entertainment, technology, lifestyle and more. There are over 250,000 comments per day on the site, over 5,500 new commenters signing up per day and 1.4 million facebook referrals each day.
Lifehacker.com is one of the largest and most popular blogs in the world. Lifehacker is a forum in which authors from all walks of life give practical advice for home and work life on many different topics. Medium can be in the form of text, video and / or audio. Readers of Lifehacker can comment and ask questions on the blog.
Mashable.com is another famous blog. Mashable is a media and entertainment company and content includes technical digital and entertainment worldwide.
The Future of Blogging
Blogs are an integral part of our lives. They help you to relate to your clients and to receive feedback and valuable information. Blogs help you to socialise and to express your opinion. They are the voice of your business.
A blog will not give you results immediately. It is not a set and forget means of communication. It is not a get rich quick scheme and it does require work. It is an online journal of thoughts.
Blogs are going to remain for a long time. The structure of blogging may change but what is stands for will not – people freely able to communicate online.
