Blogging is an Internet activity where individuals either put up content on their own blogging sites or write and post blog articles on someone else’s site. The term blog was derived from the combination of the words web and log. In the mid 2000’s, blogging was usually done by a single individual, but in recent years there have been an increase in “multi-author blogs or MABs”. MABs are when there are several people writing for the same site and their work gets professionally edited before posting. There are also sites where the owners aggressively invite guest bloggers, to fill up their sites with quality content. Guest bloggers usually are not directly affiliated to the sites they are posting on and tend to be knowledgeable about a topic through industry experience.
Web publishing tools emerged in the 1990’s to make it easy for “non-technical” users to post their content to blogs. Before this development, only webmasters, who were knowledgeable about FTP (file transfer protocol) and HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language), could publish web content. Since this development, the numbers of blogs and blog contributors has greatly increased.
Types of Blogs
There are two main types of blogs, static blogs and advanced blogs. Static blogs are sites where strictly content is posted to inform visitors of new updates. These types of blogs are used more by businesses to showcase whitepapers such as product updates and press releases. Advanced blogs on the other hand, are meant to create a community for the visitors and to be much more interactive. These sites incorporate social sharing, images, videos, and feedback sections for regular viewers. Advanced blogs would be sites that would allow guest posting, as they are meant to facilitate two-way communications.
Versatility of Blogs
The great thing about blogs is that they are not limited in their scope of information. Many blogs are focused on a specific subject or industry, while others serve as an individual’s personal accounts. Other blogs are used by companies or individuals as online advertising sites to promote a brand and its services. Blogs are also used by educators to instruct and explain how things are to be done. Some people refer to this type of blog as an Edublog. Blogs with a specific subject or industry focus may be called artblogs, photoblogs, video blogs or vlogs, MP3 blogs, or podcasts for audio blogs. Microblogging is another type of blogging, which has gained much popularity, where posts are very short and concise. Twitter is considered a microblogging site.
Evolution of Blogging
The evolution of blogging started with the online diary, which people used to publish events in their personal lives. Early records of personal blogging date back to 1994. When hosting companies started offering blog services, making it easy to upload text files and photos online, blogging grew exponentially. According to a survey published by the Nielsen Company, there were more than 155 million public blogs as of February 2011.
The blogosphere has been said to be a good source to find out information on the public pulse. Blogosphere is a term used by the blogging community, which means blogs are all connected to one another through links, articles being shared or content being talked about.
Internet marketers watch for the ongoing trends in the blogosphere, as they are a good indicator of the public’s perception on various issues and what customers are looking for.
Blogging Platforms
Many companies have now found that blogging platforms, in combination with their social media sites, are effective mediums for marketing and showcasing promotions. Blogs can be used by companies to inform the public about their products or services or to provide contact information for their clients. Longer posts or white-papers are also posted by companies on their blog sites.
Appropriate Tools
One very useful blogging tool is the “share this” button. There are hundreds of possible social media sites where a blog post can be shared. By providing visitors with the option to share blog content, visitor’s help spread the story over the Internet, hence making it go viral. The more people who see the original post, the better the chances are visitors will return on their own, to look for new content. This helps to create a blogging community, where people are sharing, contributing and using the information to its full advantage.
Building Communities
Blogging communities are beneficial to businesses in many ways; they can use the platform to reach current clients and make sure they are satisfied. Alternatively they can use competitor’s blogs to find unhappy customers and try to convert them over to their company. Online environments are accessible by anyone, so consumers and companies can interact with whoever they want to engage with.
Drive Revenues
Blogs can also drive revenues for site owners, if they get big enough. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing seek out blog content and rank them based on their information. The search engine “crawlers” read the blog posts and evaluate their relevance based on the keywords in the article. When those keywords are searched for, the search engine turns up the most relevant pages to that search, whether it is a company website or a blog post. This is why companies and bloggers spend so much time optimizing their blog pages. When a blog or a page is ranked high, there will be more advertisers interested in that site, making the blog monetarily rewarding for the website owner.
Success with Blogging
The best strategy for building an audience and optimizing a blog site is by having great content. By doing this, you will hit more keywords in searches, as well as have more people sharing your content with others through backlinks. Backlinks are also used heavily by search engines to rate pages. If more people are sharing this information, then obviously the content on this page is relevant to a lot of people. Blogging requires a lot time, effort and resources to succeed in gaining valuable traffic. But as with most things, if you put the energy into it, you will be sure to reap the rewards.
HostPapa is a website hosting company serving over 100,000 customers around the world. Since launching in 2006, HostPapa has offered reliable, budget-friendly, easy-to-use web hosting solutions for small to medium-sized businesses.
