Blogging 101
The term blogging, blog, and blogger are few of the common words on the internet, and hardly would you surf the internet in a day without coming across any of them. Moreover, most of the result pulls up by search engines like Google belongs to a blog or falls under the blog section of a website. Therefore, saying blogging is a “growing digital marketing niche” might seems to be an understatement with over 600 million blogs in 2020.
With this popularity and huge numerical evidence, it’s very sensible for someone to wonder or seek answers to certain questions like who is a blogger, what a blog is, and how can blogging favors their business or personal ambitions.
You don’t really have to stress yourself on this matter, as I have gathered and provided answers to anything that might be bothering you right now. All you just have to do is to put yourself in a relaxed mood and be ready to broaden your knowledge about the subject.
What is a blog?
Blog is derived from the word “web log” the term for an internet-based diary where people share their thoughts, and daily activities. Therefore, we can define a blog as an online journal, channel, or platform on which people share their ideas, thoughts, and views. Unlike a website, a typical blog always has the comment section where readers and researchers reply, teach, react, and contribute to whatever the author has written.
The blog was for sharing personal experiences in the past, until the moment businesses and companies realized that the channel can bring lots of customers to their side. Ever since then, the niche began to flourish, and later become a source of income to those that are doing it well.
What is blogging?
Blogging is the act of maintaining a blog. It involves all the activities performed by a writer in the creation of contents, and the enhancement of the blog visibility. In the content aspect, blogging includes topic research, content writing, content editing, and the addition of video and images to communicate better with audiences.
The second part was not necessary until recently when most niches are saturated, and presently, a blog cannot reach its full potential unless its visibility is optimized- that’s what brought about the Search engine optimization (SEO). The term encompasses all that’s done to ensure that a blog is ranked high on Search engine result pages (SERPs) for other people to see, comment, and make use of the information therein.
Who is a blogger?
A blogger is a person who owns and runs a blog. It can be an individual, group of people or a business that have dedicated their website for the enlightenment and education of people of the same interest. For example, I am Anil Premllal, a digital marketing blogger who because of my passion for this niche, and my vision to see others succeed has decided to use this website to teach newbies about blogging over the next few weeks.
Therefore, it’s my responsibility to have a content schedule, decide on the type of content to use, and also get feedback from my audience.
What is the purpose of a blog?
The purpose of having a blog ranges, and depends on who is managing it. The first known purpose also accounts for the reason it came into existence in the first instance which is to share the writer’s thoughts and ideas to the rest of the world. Unlike the hardcover diaries which can only be accessed by its writer, blogs allow people to share their expertise and discoveries in their career to people living far away from them.
By making their knowledge known to other people, they might eventually find a person who’s working on the same project and therefore work together to bring their dreams to fruition. The people in the food industry have been doing well in this sector, lots of new recipes have been discovered online due to the diffusion of ideas on various blogs.
The other purpose is to make money. Gone are the days when blogging was just an expression of one’s interest in a particular niche, right now the best business advice so far is to turn your passion into your source of income. Using several digital marketing techniques, bloggers have found a means by which they could integrate other campaigns to their blogging passion to make not just their survival, but to also have huge savings in their bank accounts.
Once the blog grows to a stage where it receives much traffic daily, a blogger can decide to add affiliate marketing and other Pay-per-click campaigns to make money through their blog. They can also choose to go more professional by creating and selling their info products such as an eBook or a manual on their blogs.
As stated earlier, the purpose of having a blog depends on the people in-charge. Recently, companies and businesses have been integrating a blog section to their website. And that has been because they have discovered that a blog gives them the chance to relate with more customers on the internet. They knew that by properly managing their blog, and using highly converting content they can get hold of their niche’s authority, and generate new leads for their business.
What is the difference between a blog and a website?
It’s funny though because I can say a blog is a website and a website can be a blog. A blog is created the same way as a website by using a domain name and a hosting company. Meanwhile, a company can decide to use its website for blogging which will take them nothing but the upload of plugins- all thanks to content management software (CMS) like WordPress.
The difference between the two is that a blog is updated with contents regularly even sometimes daily depending on the blogger schedule, and it gives chances to the audience to react and communicate back to the writer. Whereas, a website has a static page which has no comment feature, and doesn’t have much content.
Conclusion;
Now that you have had a strong foundation of the subject, I am very sure that you want more and will like to have your blog up and running very soon. I will encourage you to stay tuned with this blog as I am going to dive deeper into blogging in my next post. But in the meantime, feel free to ask your questions, and drop your concerns in the comment section below.
