Blogs

A blog, technically known as web log, is a web-based/online publication that consists primarily of periodical articles posted in reverse chronological order. In other words, they are personal websites where experiences are recorded and are read like an online diary or an online journal. Blogs can focus on almost any subjects like food, politics, or local news. A proper blog combines texts, images, web pages, links to other blogs and other media-related topics.

Parts of a blog

Authoring a blog, maintaining a record of proper blogs and adding an article to an existing blog is called blogging. The articles or stories, posted in a blog, are called blog posts or blog entries.

A blog entry consists of the following parts -

1. Title - main title, or headline of the post
2. Permalink - the URL of individual articles
3. Body - the main content of the post
4. Post Date - date and time the post was published

Optional blog entries include the following:

• Categories [or tags] - subjects that the blog posting discusses
• Comments - comments added by the readers
• Trackback - links to other sites that refer to the entry

Personal blogs - these include online journals or diaries where people can post poems, prose, thoughts, complaints, daily experiences and personal ideas.

Professional blogs - these are focused on individual's professional focus, crafts and passions. They dictate a professional journey, demonstrate expertise or network-matters to other professionals.

Paid blogs - employees who are paid on behalf of the company create these blogs.

Business blogs - business blogs are used to promote and defame businesses, to argue about economic concepts, discuss about demand and supply concepts, disseminate information and share stock pit ideas.

Cultural blogs - they discuss mainly about sports, music, theater, other arts and crafts and popular cultural shows.

Social blogs - they discuss about the social factors

Topical blogs - these blogs basically focus on a niche. For example Google Blog covers nothing else but just facts about Google.

Science blogs - these speak about scientific issues, new discoveries and scientific inventions.

Moblog - it is also known as mobile blog, consisting of contents posted to the Internet from mobile phones [i.e. cellular phones] or personal digital assistant [PDA]. They require special software.

Educational blog - these include blogs written by students and teachers. It helps students to quickly catch up with a missing lesson, offer teachers to introduce course plans, record experiences of class excursions and information about various academic topics.

Political blog - these blogs not only speak of news and politics but also link to articles from news web sites and offer readers to add their own views and comments.

Link blog - it is a way to share interesting links [URLs] and often provide reference to other blog entries and web sites.

Spam blog - commonly known as splogs, these are forms of high-pressure advertising. They are characterized by bold lettering and are often linked to other splogs.

Sketch blog - these are blogs where an artist mainly posts different sketches and types of visual arts on a regular basis.

Photo blogs - they consists of a gallery of images published regularly.

Collaborative blogs - these include blogs open to everyone or limited to a group of people. The examples are MetaFilter, Slashdot, Blogcritics, and Indymedia.

Blogging software like Nucleus CMS, Movable Types, Blogger etc. help you to create blogs easily and instantly. They support RSS [really simple syndication] feeders that are automatically integrated into the software; so every time you create a posting in the blog or place a comment, it creates a feed for it. This helps the readers to read the blogs in their own leisure. The software also allows you to generate search engine friendly pages. This means that your web page can stop ending in long URLS like

http://www.mydresses.com/main.php?category=garments=fashion

and start ending in simple .htm URLs, like

http://www.mydresses.com/pagegarments-fashion.htm

Here are some of the significant blogging software:

Blogger - http://www.blogger.com - this is the fastest and easiest way, as you do not need knowledge of HTML. However, if you want to customize your blog you can quickly learn how to add to the template to make it your own.

Word Press - http://www.wordpress.org - it is the most popular blog script on the Internet. Some of its search engine friendly features include plugin that allows to create an MP3 player on your website so that you can use it for pod casting. However, other features include photos, technorati tags, sitemaps, and a wide array of templates that can change the look of your blog.

Drupal - http://www.drupal.org - this is a content management system that performs a range of activities. Along with creating blogs, it also helps in creating a community of blogs, or a complete community including forums, group meetings and others.

Nucleus CMS - http://www.nucleuscms.org - it has some unique features of creating an ezine from the posts and sending them as emails. It also allows you to automate the process and send out your ezine whenever you want it to go out, thereby helping you to build a list of subscribers.

Typepad - http://www.typepad.com/ - specially used to create business blogs.

LiveJournal - http://www.livejournal.com - this is a free blogging service, largely used for creating personal journals.

Creating a blog is very easy and it is free. Sites like Blogger, Drupal etc. offer you blogging freely along with free layouts, fonts, and templates.

Here is an example of creating blog stories in www.digg.com

When you visit this website, you can either view the articles posted in them or post your own series of articles. When you want to view the blogs, you can simply click on the link "Read Blog Stories" and read the article. You can even view the exact time and date of posting, view the comments and email the article to any email id of your choice. However, on the other hand, when you want to post your own article on Digg site, you should click on "Submit a New Story" button. When a new page opens, firstly paste the URL on which you want to write your blog. Then give a title to the article, write the dig story, choose a category for your dig story, and click on "continue" button for filling blank spaces of other questions. When it is ultimately over, you can click on "Submit" button and your blog will be posted. You are also entitled to check your own article and view the number of comments posted by other people about your blog.

Importance of blogs for your business

Blogs are very important for any type of businesses. Since they are personal entries so they allow the author to speak about his/her personal views. When you have a business of your own, you should also have blogs. This is because blogs help you to brand your business. You can create your own niche, help others to brand their products with that of yours and also create your image and brand.

Whether you consider your blog to be a "tab" on your website or your website to be a "tab" on your blog, the meaning remains the same. With blogs, the website pages remain dynamic and fresh. Blog software is inexpensive and free, user-friendly and software update costs are minimal. You are also allowed to easily incorporate portfolios, information and "web style pages" in blogs to make them look attractive to customers. Blogs are excellent Word of Mouth [WOM] marketing tools, as they help you to communicate with potential customers.

Blogs help your business to get instant success because it helps in the following way:

• Adds content in less time - you don't have to spend time uploading [FTP] files to your host like static sites. You can just have an administrative panel and enter your blog postings.
• Build link popularity - links are important to increase your own site's ranking in Google and other search engines. RSS feeds are very popular and help to read content quickly so blogs with link popularity will become faster popular than sites with no feeds.
• Make money instantly - Word Press blogging software helps you to place AdSense Ads anywhere on the pages that offer you to make money by promoting affiliate sites or selling your own products.
• Provides marketing popularity for newsletters - most of the emails do not reach the customers because of Spam blockers that reside in the visitor's computer or web host's server. A blog with RSS feed will allow the visitor to receive newsletter automatically by subscribing to the feed on the blog.

For attracting more visitors to your blog, make sure that the blog postings are optimized with popular keywords. Use services like PinGoat to ping blogger indexing sites every time you change your site. Pinging your blog is basically extending invitation for indexing services like Technorati, IceRocket and Feedster to visit your site and index it. Last but not the least, you should update your Google Sitemap with almost every posts and resubmit it.

The Google Sitemap program is a two-way communication prevalent between Google and webmasters. It means creating a special xml file to better index your blog site.

Blogs help you to advertise, share your views, post images, and derive fun - so post in blogs to get maximum benefits.