BLOG AND BLOGGING
A. Definitions of blog and blogging
The term “blog” is a contraction of “web log,” which refers to the practice
of keeping an online journal or diary. A blog is a regularly updated website or
web page typically run by an individual or a small group where content (text,
images, and videos) are published in an informal and conversational style
and in reverse chronological order.
Each content of a blog is known as a post or a blog post. Most blog posts
contain the comment section which enables the readers to share their views
on that post, give a solution to a problem or discuss with other users.
Blogging is the act of creating and sharing content on the internet to
inform, educate, or spread ideas about any subject of interest.
It provides the easiest way to keep the targeted audience up-to-date and
build trust with them.
Blogger is the person who creates, publishes, and maintains the blog for both
personal and public use. The rank of a blog entirely depends upon the
blogger.
B. History of Blog
The first blog “net” was created by Justin Hall in January 1994
The term weblog was first coined on December 17, 1997 by John Barger and
was later named blog by peter Merhoiz in 1999
In 1999 Blogger was launched as a platform for writing blogs
In 2000, a large number of blogging platforms got started, including Boing
Boing, Dooce, Gizmodo, Wonkette, and Huffington Post.
In February 2002, the first blog search engine "Technorati" was launched.
In 2003, WordPress released its first version of the blogging platform and
currently it is the most popular blogging platform for beginners as well as
professionals.
A blog becomes a part of modern culture (2006-2008)
In 2013, LinkedIn was launched. It allows fresher and professionals to share
their opinions.
In 2016, blogging becomes more popular when WordPress started to add
".blog domain" extension to its blog URL.
C. Blog versus Website
Content Frequency: Blogs are regularly updated with new content
(even multiple articles a day) while a website is a more static web
entity optimized for static content with no new or fresh content.
Readership & Engagement: A fresh content uploaded, blogs often
create a connection with your readers (& subscription options via
newsletters) and attract engagement like social shares & comments
from the readers. Websites, on the other hand, to do not encourage
conversation and hence no scope of audience engagement.
Better SEO: With a blog, you can cover a whole array of topics and
have better content (engaging & in-depth) that helps you stay relevant
to search engines and hence rank better for the queries you’re
targeting. Websites, on the other hand, are static and have thin or
sparse content
Blogs get more traffic: Another advantage of blogs over websites is
that blogs get more visibility on social
Advantages of Blog
There following are advantages of blog:
1. Improved SEO and web traffic
A valuable, relevant, and informative content helps us to improve SEO
ranking and bring more audience to our blog.
2. Learning new technology
Writing and reading blog posts can help user to understand and learn new
technology quickly.
The blog can also help to learn video and photography skills. Using a blog,
you can learn web designing and programming languages such
as HTML, PHP, MySQL, etc.
3. Helps to improve writing skills
Writing blog posts can help one to improve writing skills and style. It also
provides a way to learn new English words, spellings, use of punctuation,
and sentence structure.
4. Improves presentation skills
Writing content for our audience in their understandable language helps us
to improve our presentation skills.
5. Educate others
a blog allows students as well as working professionals to learn and enhance
their knowledge..
6. Promote businesses
Blog posts help to promote both small as well as large businesses. Using blog
posts, we can promote our business online and attract more visitors to our
site.
7. Communicate with Worldwide Audience
Communicating with a worldwide audience is one of the biggest advantages
of the blog. It provides an opportunity to meet a wider range of clients and
build trust with worldwide audiences through high quality, relevant, valuable,
and effective content.
8. Easily connect with social media
Most of the blogging tools help us to connect and share our blog with various
social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus,
Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
9. Very easy to set up
Blogs are very easy to set up. We can set it up without having good technical
knowledge. Anyone can start writing a blog post using tools
like Blogger and Wordpress. We can start these tools anytime by setting up
an e-mail account.
Disadvantages of Blog
The following are disadvantages of blog:
1. Reflects badly on your brand
Poorly written content, low-quality posts, and spelling errors can badly reflect
on the blogger.
2. Social life
Spending too much time blogging can ruin a person’s social life.
3. Time
Time is the biggest disadvantage of blog posts. A well organized and pure
content on a blog takes a huge amount of time in writing. Not only writing,
but the editing and constant proofreading also takes a lot of time to produce
correct and plagiarism free content.
4. Health risks
spending most of the time in writing blog posts could lead to eyestrain, back
strain and shoulder strain
How to Start a Blog
The following five steps are essential in starting a blog
1. Choose the best blogging platform
Choosing a blogging platform is the first step to start a blog. The following
blogging platforms are available in the market:
o - WordPress
o - Blogger
o - Medium
o - Tumblr
WordPress.org is the most popular blogging platform since 2003. It is search
engines and social media friendly platform, which provides various
customization features to bloggers. It is mainly designed for online
businesses and allows people to build blogs within minutes.
2. Pick a domain name
A domain is a unique name or unique address of our blog on the internet
through which the general online audience identifies our blog or website.
3. Get a web hosting account.
After selecting the blogging platform and domain name, select a reliable web
hosting services for your blog. Blog's performance and functionality totally
depend on the web host provider.
4. Install blogging software and set up a blog
5. Change the theme
Once you create the blog, you can also change its theme and layout.
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