Sometimes I wonder if we publish enough content aimed at beginners to Web marketing. So I thought I’d write a post aimed at the novice answering the question “what is a blog?” I remember asking the same question myself a few years ago when blogging first became popular. I’ve tried to include enough interesting information about blogging that even people confident in their ability to define the word “blog” will want to read this post.
A Brief History of Weblogs
Rebecca Blood wrote The Weblog Handbook. According to her history of blogging (written in 2000), Jon Barger coined the term “weblog” in 1997. He used the term to describe his site Robot Wisdom, which consisted of curated Web links (with commentary) presented in reverse chronological order. (In other words, the most recent entries appear at the top.)
Since Jon Barger coined the term, his opinion on what constitutes a weblog matters. According to this piece in Wired, Barger claims that a “real” blog logs “all the URLs you want to save or share.” He goes on to say that if you have more original posts than links, you need to learn some humility. Of course, his opinion bears little resemblance to actual practice today.
What Is Blogging?
The portmanteau “Weblog” combines the words “Web” and “log”, but Peter Merholz saw two other words at work there–“we” and “blog”. Early bloggers were literally “logging the Web”, or “blogging“.
At the time, only a couple of dozen people ran sites that could call themselves blogs. You can still find lists of blogs left over from those days. Many of those bloggers still update their sites. By 1999, people began to publish blog-specific directories. The EatonWeb Portal launched before the others. The site continues listing and categorizing blogs today. In 1999, EatonWeb used a single criterion for inclusion in their directory: “dated entries”.
A Blog Definition
Looking for a short definition of the word “blog”? “A website that consists of dated entries” defines the word just fine. You can find more detailed definitions here and here.
The launches of multiple “create-your-own-blog” tools accompanied the launch of the EatonWeb portal. These included sites like Blogger, Edit this Page, GrokSoup, and Pitas. Google acquired Blogger.com in 2003. Users can still create free blogs at Blogger.com, and all of these blogs reside at subdomains of Blogspot.com. Xanga and Movable Type launched in 2000 and 2001, respectively. WordPress launched in 2003. It has since evolved into the most popular content management system on the Internet. WordPress, as of 2012, powers over 60 million websites.
Characteristics of Early Blogs
Early Weblogs shared the following characteristics:
- Links drove the content. In the early days of blogging, people wouldn’t consider a site without links much of a blog at all. People think differently now, but many of the best blogs link out freely to others.
- The writer commented on the links. These comments might include support or criticism. Early bloggers often tried to serve in a fact-checking capacity.
- Writers also included personal observations and diary-like entries. Fifteen years ago, most people in the then-new blogging community would be surprised by a blog made up of only diary-style entries. Lots of bloggers now post little else.
Rebecca’s Pocket divides blogs into two categories:
- Filters – These publish interesting links to content on the Web. They filter the content for the reader, so that she doesn’t have to just surf the Internet at random.
- Journals – Blogs which consist mostly of diary-style entries became popular after 1999. Bloggers overwhelmingly favor this style today, although most bloggers combine these two functions.
As of 2014, countless additional developments shaped the phenomenon. In 1999, RSS offered readers an easy way to follow specific blogs’ posts. In 2002, Technorati launched as a search engine specializing in blog content. 2004 saw the beginning of podcasting, where people record audio files and upload them to the Internet for people to listen to. 2004 also saw Steve Garfield‘s creation of “video blogging“. (YouTube launched a year later.) Twitter popularized “micro-blogging” in 2006.
Modern Blog Features
Modern blogs usually feature more than just a reverse-chronological list of dated links with commentary from the author. Almost all modern blogs also feature archives and comments.
Archives list blog posts by year and month. By clicking on a link, a reader can find all of the posts published in a given month and year.
Comments provide readers an opportunity to weigh in on what they’ve read. The best blogs feature conversations between the author and her readers. Modern blogs resemble forums in that respect, but the publisher initiates all of the conversations. Readers can’t launch threads on blog in the same way that they do on forums.
The Best Way to Learn More about Blogs
Start reading. Find a blog, read the posts there, then follow the links to other blogs. Do this for a few hours, and you’ll understand how blog works better than some bloggers. It matters little what topic interests you–attach the word “blog” to it and search Bing for “topic + blog”, and you can stay busy for the rest of your workday.
People and organizations love to blog about news, celebrities, TV shows, movies, cooking, search engine marketing, Middle-Earth, and just about anything else you can think of.
These videos can help, too:
Do You Need a Blog?
No one needs a blog. But blogs can help you achieve certain goals. Readers of this site want to drive more traffic to their websites, usually via search engine traffic. Blogging can help you achieve that goal. By posting new content to your site on a consistent basis, you give search engine crawlers a reason to visit your site more often. You also provide more potential keyword combinations to the engines, increasing your chances that one of your pages will match a user’s query.
You can use other strategies to drive traffic to your website via search engines, though. Many successful Internet businesses use pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic to their sites. Other forms of advertising work, too.
If you enjoy writing, or if someone on your staff enjoys writing, blogging can drive traffic and leads. I can offer some advice to aspiring bloggers:
- Post regularly. I should follow this advice more closely. You should have a schedule for how often you post. Posting monthly works fine if you can’t handle more of a commitment. Posting weekly will drive more traffic. Posting daily will drive even more traffic. Posting several times a day (3-4) maximizes your traffic potential, but you’ll need a full time writer for that.
- Post in the morning. Almost 80% of the bloggers surveyed here said that they read blogs in the morning. Posts published in the morning get more Twitter mentions and Facebook shares, too.
- Learn to write well. Practice leads to improved writing. Reading does too. Start with On Writing Well by William Zinsser. Follow that with anything by Hemingway.
- Write long posts. Detailed how-to posts work well at driving traffic and generating leads. Longer posts garner more search engine traffic by providing more potential keyword phrase matches.
- Link to other sites. If you want traffic from the Web, then participate. Some website owners fear sending traffic to potential competitors. Others fear triggering search engine penalties. Don’t let those fears stop you. Courage works.
- Just do it. Installing WordPress and making posts comes easy to most people. Even if you fear new activities like this, the potential rewards should outweigh the initial discomfort with the learning curve.
Conclusion
Bloggers write and post content on an ongoing, dated basis. Diary style entries and curated links make up most blogs’ content. Blogs can drive thousands of visitors and as many leads as you can handle. Practice. Publish consistently. Then watch the traffic and leads roll in.
Do you already blog? If not, are you considering starting one?
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
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Guest Post Link Building: Why It Hurts the Web
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness for Non-expert Websites
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