The number of people blogging has had a huge surge in recent years, which obviously leads to an increase in the actual number of blogs online too – but what is blogging really? So many people have their own ideas about it and their own reasons for doing it, that I think it is worth delving into this question a bit more.
Early on, when blogs were just starting to become more common, they tended to be written by people as an online diary, sometimes with a specific topic in mind, other times, not so much, so the amount of traffic that each blog gained was very varied. In this manner, these content owners were said to be ‘bloggers’ and they were ‘blogging.’
As time went on, bloggers began to see all the advantages that blogging had over general static website content and began to alter the way that they wrote and also tweaked the subject matter that they wrote about.
But What Is Blogging?
So broadly speaking, blogging is just another form of writing that people can do online. What makes this form of writing into blogging is that the writing is fashioned into chronological articles or posts and is written using blog software. Each of these blog posts has its very own web address, which is called a Permalink and is very useful for helping blogs to climb up the search engine rankings!
Whilst blogging, readers will usually be allowed to comment on what has been written and you can start up a very interactive back and forth communication between readers and bloggers. People are, if they like and want to share your content, able to tweet what you’ve incorporated on your blog, or share it via Facebook, Delicious, ShareThis and many more. Obviously you like this across many areas of the internet now but it tends to always happen with the blogging community.
Some people will use blogging as a way to express their unique or expert opinions, i.e. to teach or to entertain. For instance if someone was teaching an interested audience how to bake a Christmas cake but doing so in a step by step format, they would post a step each day and expect users to log in or visit the blog each day to keep track.
It’s important to note that you don’t just have to write for it to be classified as blogging; you can also add images, videos, in fact anything at all that you want to share; you are not limited by any rules with blogging, it is up to you. If you to write or take pictures, or film, or speak – whatever you like, it is up to you!
Blogging attracts many different kinds of people because you can choose your subject matter and blog purely for the enjoyment factor, or you can use blogging to make money. People do not need any specific technical knowledge which is a huge advantage.
So hopefully this has helped to clarify what is blogging and what blogging is all about and you are ready to get started on your own blog!