Blogging is Fun

How Can I Define a Blog

Have you been an ardent follower of celebrities' blogs?  Are you the kind who wants to communicate your thoughts to people instantly? Or are you among those who like to maintain a dairy? Then why not start writing a blog instead of answering these questions in affirmative. To simplify, I can term blog a Digital Dairy where your posts are chronologically maintained.

Actually speaking, a blog is a concentrated word for ‘Web log'. It is kind of a website where you can put in entries, commentaries, descriptions videos and even graphics. Sounds fascinating! Blogging can be done for personal or for professional reasons. Your motive is the driving force behind your posts.

How Should I start blogging

You don't have to be a writer material for writing a blog. All you need is translating your opinions, point of views, ideas into words and jotting them down. Just follow your heart and use your head and here blogging becomes an easy and exciting practice. I have seen many people who simply don't have much of writing experience. But I must tell you that doesn't mean that their blogs are not worth reading. Rather, as they are non pretentious, they are the most interesting ones to read. All you have to do is visit any of the online blogging sites, create your account, choose your template and start posting your entries right there. Simple enough! Start searching for blogger, typepad, Live Journal, blogware and wordpress today and make the world feel your presence.

How to make a blog appealing

This question might have perturbed many bloggers. They write so well, they have command over the language yet the numbers of followers is so thin. May be this is an answer to their question. The blogs should be appealing. When I say appealing that doesn't mean it should have flowery language, too many of photos or videos. It can be simple yet attractive. The look- and- feel should be exciting so that the visitor to your post gets attracted towards it instantly. Next your profile should be eye catching. It should give all the required information to your reader. Believe me, this brings in more readership and your authenticity as a writer increases to another level. Try it for once to believe me.

Next you should post relevant and authentic material on your blogs. The information you are putting in, should be informative for the reader. If you could phrase your thoughts in minimum amount of words then it would be great. Nobody likes to read too long posts (except the ones of celebrities). So do not post anything just for filling in the entries column. Read thoroughly whatever you write. You should be able to judge yourself if the content of your write up is relevant and comprehensive or does it make sense to even a layman or a novice?

The next thing you should keep in mind while writing is giving an apt and suggestive title to your write up. The keywords can do words if used correctly. Choose your keywords with utmost care and the traffic to your page increases on its own. Why? Simply because most of the search engines want the relevant keywords. The more the right keywords, the more your audience and thereby a boost to your online presence globally.

If you want to provide some links in your blogs then be careful not to overdo it. Although there is no set rule for it, but it is my personal suggestion that these links should not exceed from 2 to 3. These could be of your website, or any external link, hub pages or articles. Try to refer to important link lists.

How should I promote my blog

When you are done with writing part for your blog, next thing you worry about is blog promotion. But it is not that difficult. It is a simple activity that takes not much of your time but may demand a constant attention from your end.

There are a number of ways to promote your blog. What I did personally is written below. It might be helpful for you also. You can follow any or all of the below mentioned promotion tactics:

* Social bookmarking like stumbleupon, digg and many more alike

* Social media sites

* Give a link of your blog in your article

* Use Yahooanswers

* Provide interlinks

* Use Live journals/ hub pages

* Submissions in google

* Submit your blogs in blog directories

* Register your blogs with Blog Search Engines

- Blogline

- Blogscope

-Technorati

What are the benefits of blogging

As I have said blogging is done for various reasons, the benefits you reap are ought to be varied. On personal front, it satisfies the ego of the writer hidden within you. After all who doesn't want to be heard? Secondly, you can have your say in your own way. What else do you want? There are no predefined rules as to what to write and how to write, if you are writing for your own fun, or it is your hobby or just trying a hand at writing. So just enjoy writing.

Talking professionally, blogging is the best way to find back links of business associates together as everyone with varied taste interest and ideas, opinions and perceptions relate easily with each other. Like RSS feeds blogs too can do a miracle in increasing web traffic. Constant updates, authentic and relevant content and appropriate keywords help the search engines to spider crawl your site more.

Your readers will come back to you frequently and consistently if you give the reader what he wants. Your readership increases and he takes interests in reading you. Hereby you gain a constant readership to your site.

Blogging also has an upper hand when compared to newspapers and press releases as it provides more opportunities of real time genuine discussions. In a blink of an eye the follower gets an answer to any of his query by your blog if you keep updating it and thereby you render an open medium to sharing of thoughts and discussions. The ideas of many flows in and interactions get a platform to be shared.

Blogging is economical and more user friendly as you do not need a web designer to update or maintain your site time and again. It is easy, it is personal it is everything but more economic. It is also considered to be the best Content Management System as you can easily manage your videos, photos, files, PDFs, and other documents. The key benefit is that the navigation bar of your blog is too capable to save every entry permanently.

Types of Blogs

Depending on the style of posts you can categorize blogs in various ways. In some blogs you can share your feelings while others might have been crafted for a corporate purpose while yet another can give you opportunity to upload video and share them globally. So basically, it all depends on your choice and intention behind it.

Your rationale for writing blog can do wonders. Don't believe me! Just try it for once. I bet you will yourself realize how easy it is to pen down the ideas and give them a universal platform to speak your mind. Your idea behind blogging categorizes blogs under various kinds like:

Personal Blogs: It is the most typical use of it. Its usages vary from person to person like to share your thoughts, or describe any important event of your life, throw light on something or write about something you feel strongly about or just to have a say.

Corporate Blogs: Well, here comes in the main objective behind blogging. Corporate blogging is done for three main reasons.

*for promoting or advertising

*for community sharing

*for a PR relation

Corporate blogging can help internally by augmenting communication among the fellow workers and externally by propagating and branding.

Question Blogs: Is there a question in your mind? Try this. You will get an instant reply to all your queries. And who knows, you might even answer to the questions asked by others.

Genre Based Blogs: A wide variety of genres are included in these. From videos to photos, travelogues, legal or anything that comes to your mind.

Blogs by Device: The medium by which you compose a blog can also classify it. You must have heard of moblog. It is nothing but a post written by your mobile phone or PDA.

Blogs by Subject: According to the subject, this kind of blog caters to followers of education, arts, fashion, politics, music, education etc.

I hope you must have got answers to at least some if not all of your questions. In my next article I would be writing more of it. Till then Happy Blogging!