What is Blogging All About?This is the first in a series about blogging. This article is about the basics of blogging and where it all came from. It also includes some guidance on the structure of blogs.
Blogging originated in the 1990's from weblogs. These were the "servers" log file. Blogs have developed into no line journals. Weblogs require a dedicated URL/or website but for blogging don't require anything except a subscription to a free blogging service.
Many people use blogs for personal reasons such as journals etc. They write about their feelings, adventures or even just their day to day lives. In fact they write about almost anything they want.
Blogs are also used for commercial and business purposes. They are use to boost business, bring public awareness to products or services or to boost the writers credibility. In fact they can be a very effective form of advertising.
Blogs are also be used as educational tools. Teachers or lecturers can post details of lectures, seminars on their blogs. Alternatively they can issue summaries etc.
Writing is an art so blogging is an art form. Blogging allows the writer to hone their skills with words by choosing the right words to describe their feelings, wishes and desires. The basic structure of a blog should include:-
Title - This allows the blog to be labeled
Body - this is the content of the blog
Track back- you can link to other sites using your blog with hyperlinks
Permanent links - your blog will have its own unique URL
Comments - most blogs allow the readers to comment on the blog
The blog provider should also allow you to have additional features such as the ability to moderate the blog comments and control spam.
If you want your blog to be read and to be effective you need to consider the following:-
1) Your audience. It is best to consider your audience and make your posts relevant and interesting to your intended audience. You need to write something that is of interest to your audience.
2) Make it Useful. If your blog is anything other than a personal journal you should produce content that is useful to your audience. Give them a reason to come back.
3) Don't make it too long or too complicated. Most people are busy and will probably scan quickly through the blog. So make it concise and to the point and try not to use long complicated words.
4) Add pictures or videos. "A picture paints a thousand words" and will be remembered easier by most people than a load of text. So add pictures to your blog. The quality is not critical but obviously the better the quality the better to give a good impression. It is fairly easy to get hold of video software to post videos on the web as well.
5) Add audio to your blog. Not as good as video but still good.
6) Make it interactive. The more they have to do the more they will remember the blog and the more likely they are to re-visit.
If you have a blog you can join a blog community where people with similar blogs link to each other. Links can be made with hyperlinks or by RSS feeds. The great advantage of this is that people will start to read your blog and that is after all why it was published so people would read it. If the blog is for commercial purposes it is vital that it is read or it is useless. You can also get into social bookmarking which will help to get the blog noticed but this is a more advanced strategy (you can find out more about this at the Internet Marketing Academy).
