What Is This Blogging Thing
Then?
By: Martin Andrew
Everybody is raving on about blogs, it seems everyone has one, and it
seems that everyone is telling you that if you want to get on in Internet
Marketing you need one too!!
But what exactly is this Blogging Thing?
OK well like everything else, theres the Long answer, the short answer,
and Martins Answer(often quite similar to the long answer, only, well,
better:-) )
Blogging, Like MOST of the other New Trends, isnt actually new at all.
Blogging has actually been around for quite some years now, I would probably
say its Infancy was pre-2000 if I really wanted to push it back.
A Blog, or Weblog, is qute simply an Online Journal or diary.
BUT, thats not what people nowadays mean, when people talk to you about
blog and blogging, they are really talking about using this blogging software
to run your sites.
The Simplicity and design of the software enables even the most technically
challenged to add updated fresh content to their webpages, basically if
you can type and use Word, you can run a Blog, this in turn is why it
is becoming ever so popular, and also why most people do use it for, or
at least most people *Were* using Blog and Blog software to run little
Personal Diary Blogs.
However, what it really is, is a way to have a regularly updated website
related to your business or theme at the push of a button.
Here are the three most popular "blogs" at the time of printing
this, they probably will remain like this for a long time, but although
these are "Blogs" they are more along the lines of an actual
real content website, rather than a personal diary type blog.
# 1
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
67,001 links from 19,265 sites.
# 2
Engadget
65,581 links from 14,884 sites.
# 3
PostSecret
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their
secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. By frank warren
21,503 links from 12,892 sites.
The MAIN Difference between a blog and a standard website, is the fact
that bloggers tend to be more personal, tend to leave more of a personal
stamp on their work. Thats why those first two sites above are WAY more
popular than if they had just been a standard impersonal website.
DON'T let this blogging craze confuse you, its really not that complex,
or infact that different to things you may already be used to, dont worry
about this whole "Blog Revolution" thing, it is more of an evolution
than a revolution, and the evolution involves websites and online business
in general, not blogging on its own, blogging has simply become a tool
to enable the following things -
Through free services such as Blogger, anyone anywhere anytime can start
a website, without having any technical knowledge.
Through blogging software, it has become easier and easier to add fresh
orginal content to your website on a regular basis,
Bloggers share information, ideas and thoughts with eachother through
reading eachothers blogs and talking about them on their own blogs,
Those are the simple elements of what blogging is.
When you start looking at the software running the blogs, and the functions
it has, you can see even more benefits, and why it is much much more than
just "a Weblog" I am talking about, I want you to understand
that blogging is an ESSENTIAL part of your entire marketing campaign,
along with Article Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and all the
other aspects I cover, blogging is essential.
BECAUSE, Not only does your average blogging software enable push button
content updates, BUT it also has the ability to do a MULTITUDE of the
mundane tasks we have to undertake to build our traffic up to our websites.
Your blogging software can pretty much take care of all your on page search
engine optimization AUTOMATICALLY!! All you need to do is post new content!!
Blog softwares can automatically reformat your content into different
code types readable by different types of technology, with a little help,
your blog could kick out pages viewable in Web Browsers, Palm Pilots,
Mobile Phones, and perhaps the best one at the moment is RSS!!
Yes, your blog will easily produce a reformatted version of your webpage
that can be syndicated by other sites, read by people directly on their
desktops, and much more!!
I do cover a wide range of advanced blogging tactics which I won't go
into here as I would be here for TOO Long!!
Quite simply, a blog, is a software to Power your websites, how you decide
to use it is up to you, but one thing I WILL STRESS here at the end is
that the whole idea behind the fact that blogs are easy to use is to use
them well, and update them regularly, to see the full benefit. Its because
of this fact, that a good blog should be updated regularly to get the
most benefits, that most blogs are really quite a personal type weblog
but DON'T let that start to limit your thinking about what you can do
with a blog, look again at the top 3 blogs, go to Technorati.com and look
at the biggest blogs.
Don't you think, actually, that most of the big blogs look more like a
magazine now, rather than a journal or diary?
Remember what I said about evolution and not revolution?
You can use a blog for whatever you want, all I stress, is MAKE SURE you
use it, and use it every day(or as often as you possibly can regularly)
Thats it for that, more will come soon, thanks for reading!
Author Bio
After being involved with Internet Marketing for some time, Martin has
decided to share his Ideas and Experiences on Succesful Online Marketing.
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