Blogging: What is it and why is everyone doing it?

Blogging started out as a way for people to keep a daily public diary of sorts. They would simply write (type) down their thoughts on what ever they were passionate about and share them with everyone.

Though it is true that blogs can be regulated and kept very private, the main purpose of them is to reach out to a number of people, to have a medium to voice your thoughts and opinions.

Blogging is essentially writing an article based on your thoughts and posting it on a web site for other people to read what you have written.

Blogging on a topic that you are passionate about will put you in touch with people from all over the world who you would not have otherwise ever met. This is similar to the social networking sites. You will create an area where people with the same interests as you will come together. The chances of finding an audience that will be interested in your topic is great as you are now able to speak to the whole world.

The origination of the term ‘blog’ is interesting. It was initially called a ‘weblog’ meaning a log or a diary or a journal that helps you to record your thoughts on a day to day basis. In that sense it was rather in its primitive stages and did not turn into an instrument for propaganda immediately. This term was later shortened to blog and this is when free blogging services like Blogger became extremely popular.

Blogging today has truly become a platform where various kinds of people from all means of life, whether they have the same ideologies or not, get together, and discuss the topics that are important to them.
Blogging in the twenty first century has become an important tool for advertising for people who wish to market their products online, for politicians who wish to sell their ideologies, and reach out, to the masses.

Moreover, creating a blog and maintaining it does not require a fortune. It seems that everybody now has a personal blog. Also, one does not need to be a computer engineer or a graphic or web designer in order to beautify their blog.

Unlike a website which operates on a different domain, and for which every single template and tab needs to be designed and created from scratch, blog do not need to have pages built for them. The blogging service providers have their own built-in templates and fonts which have to be chosen by the bloggers as per their own tastes and preferences.

Blogging is an ideal way to make new friends and come in contact with more people than you would normally meet, and this is from all quarters of the world. Such diverse people will obviously have differing viewpoints. Therefore, this gives scope for a good deal of discussion and debate with all points of view being taken on board.

Blogs can also be for the sole purpose of making new friends and socializing. That is why social networking sites have picked up the clue and in these times social networking and blogging has, to some extent, been combined, and almost become like two peas in a pod.

It would be interesting to note that the word ‘blog’ is both a noun and a verb. This leads us to the fact that blogging in some sense also helps get rid of hassles of publishing. Though your work will not come out in print, you know that you can publish your work – your articles, pictures, videos, etc – yourself through your blog.

Therefore, it may be your own personal journal that you wish others to read or your works of art in terms of the stories that you write, or the movies that you make. You can share almost any content with the world at large.

I would also note that just like you do not need to be a web designer to create your own blog, you don’t need to be a professional writer, a film maker or a photographer to publish content on your blog. It is just a space for you to indulge in your own small artistic pursuits and share those moments with others. Blogging must be used to its full potential.

Internet marketers do this by searching for “Hot Topics” and creating a blog around them. For an internet marketer the “Hot Topic” would be any subject they can find where there have been a couple thousand people searching for “keywords” related to the topic. (I will have more on this later.)