Part 5: Blogging - Starting a blog baby, starting a blog

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Of all the forms of Social Media discussed in this series, blogging is the most popular. Technorati is currently tracking 107.6 million blogs worldwide which is pretty cool when you consider that the term “weblog” from which “blog” is derived was only coined 10 years ago by Jorn Barger in 1997.

But What Is A Blog?
A blog is simply a user generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject (food, politics or local news), a particular industry (marketing, media or communications) and some function as more personal online diaries.

A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, webpages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments is an important element of most blogs. They come in many different forms and structures from a single blogger talking about the happenings of everyday life to multi-person corporate blogs. Blogs have given consumers and companies a voice and blogging has opened up a world of information sharing possibilities.

While most blogs are primarily, but not exclusively, textual some focus on photographs (photoblogs), videos (vlogs) and audio (podcasts). Blogs have moved away from being primarily online diaries of ‘what I did at school today’ and the hardcore techie stuff into an animal that is driving Web 2.0. You name it they’re blogging about it and the wealth of knowledge on the blogosphere is too astounding to simply ignore.

Blogs are not a fad that will lose popularity any time soon - they are here to stay and companies who want to be taken seriously by their consumers need to consider the benefits of starting a corporate blog or at the very least listen to what is being said about them in the blogosphere.

Ok, So How Do I Start One?

Starting a blog is one of the easiest things you can do online – it may sound a little intimidating but even the most technically impaired online user can do it. It wasn’t always like this but with the release of blogging platforms like Wordpress, Blogger and amagama things got a whole lot easier.

What these free services essentially allow you to do is to come up with a name for your blog, select the look and feel and start. It really is as easy as that. You can get as technical as you want once the basics are in place. There are loads of plug-ins and nifty little functionalities that you can add once you get into the swing of things but they aren’t essential to start out with, especially if you’re just playing around with blogging. There are also various paid for services and many companies choose to have their own blogging platform built to their exact specifications (that’s what we’ve done). This route is advisable for corporate blogs, especially if you want the blog to be integrated with the company’s site.

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