Blogging basics

What is a blog?

Blog is short for weblog. A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.

Who uses blogs?

Source: About.com @ http://weblogs.about.com/cs/weblogs101/f/whoblogs.htm

According to a Technorati report, there are approximately three million blogs being tracked by mid-2004. And, that number is continuously growing as blog software, tools and other applications become more accessible to individuals.
Blog users are as varied as the types of blogs available. However, they may be categorized in to four main types: personal bloggers, business bloggers, organizational bloggers and professional bloggers.

Personal bloggers often create blogs that contain diary or journal-type entries. Some focus their blogs on specific themes or topics that they feel passionately about like sports, technology, education, news, politics, pets, writing, art or photography.

Business bloggers create blogs to promote their products and/or services. Although these business or commercial blogs typically use this online medium as a promotional or marketing tool, the more successful ones do not contain advertisements or 'marketese' in their blog entries. Their blogs have to offer real, usable information for readers like reviews, comments, links to relevant articles and similar resources.

Organizational bloggers are people who blog as a way to communicate internally (with fellow employees, students, etc.) and/or externally (with clients, general public, etc.). These types of bloggers may be found in corporations, educational settings, non-profit organizations, and community clubs, among others.

Professional bloggers are considered a rare breed in the blogging community. These are people who are actually hired or paid to blog. They may either propose their own blog topics to a blogging network like The Weblogs, Inc. by Jason Calacanis or they may be hired to write about a specific topic by a network or a company. An example of the latter is someone like Helen Jane Yeager, who was hired to become a professional Hollywood blogger.

As the popularity of blogging grows, more and more individuals are finding different ways to use blogs. US Presidential Candidates in 2004, for example, have started using blogs as part of their campaign strategy. It will not be surprising, therefore, if more types of people begin to use blogs.

Advantages

• Search engines “love” inbound links and new, frequently updated content
• Content appears on websites automatically as soon as you publish your blog.
• Blog readers are highly potential customers (a study shows that the average blog reader’s annual income is higher than average)
• Better clickthrough
• Setup is easy and free!

Recommended applications for blogging

• Blogger The most popular application for blogging (owned by Google)
  
• Wordpress Another powerful blogging engine (supports PHP!)
  
• MSN spaces Popular among younger people