What's a Blog Anyway?

In case you don’t know what a blog is, it’s a shortened form of “weblog”. It’s like a personal journal, offering musings or information, but available to the public on a website. Blogs are informal, and often provide new entries every day, or quite frequently. There’s nothing static about a blog.

They’re intriguing because they give you an insight into the person writing them, and because you know there will be new stuff daily. Many give you the opportunity to make entries or comments yourself and become sort of dialogues or collaborations between the writer, you, and others who contribute.

Blogs sometimes have a theme , but in some, the theme is simply the person writing them – a sort of stream-of consciousness about what they’re thinking which includes what they’re worried about, mad about, concerned about, interested in, and so forth.

Like everything else on the Internet, it’s evolving and moving fast, so who knows what a blog might be tomorrow.

Are they popular? Cooking for Engineers, www.cookingforengineers.com said he had to change his server because he was getting 12,000 hits an hour.

Here are some uses for blogs:
1.Journal. As we all know, there’s something about writing things out that aids our well-being.

2.Connect. While you’re journaling for your own benefit, others benefit as well. If you allow comments, you’ll meet all sorts of people.

3.To impart information on a particular subject or range of subjects. For instance I have one on emotional intelligence – http://www.eqcoach.net/blogger.html .

4.Update on illness or hospitalization. Set up a blog to keep everyone informed on your progress. Concerned others can check daily.

5.Coordinating an event. Lets say you’re planning a huge family reunion and know it’s going to take weeks-to-moths to get it all together. Others can check daily and add their “yes” or “no” to the plans, give suggestions, etc.

6.Work project. Same as above.

7.Collegiality. Get a group of like-minded people together, such as coaches who coach in the same field. Ideas can be shared.

8.Learn about the Internet (children, teens, beginners). It’s a website, but a simple formula, and cost-free.

9.Rant and rave.

10.Have fun and learn how to write. The way to learn how to write (once you know you’re A-B-Cs) is to write, and here’s the opportunity. And you get to write about your favorite subject – you! (or in some cases, your favorite topic)

You can set up a blog free at www.blogger.com . At this site you’ll get a free trial: www.typepad.com.

Examples:

Supposedly slashdot.org (www.slashdot.org) is the most popular blog on the Internet. Its tagline is “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.”

Nancy Fenn, the IntrovertzCoach has a blog called “Introverted and Intuitive (INFP)”, http://www.theintrovertzcoach.com/blogger.html . Her tagline is: “Nancy R. Fenn describes what it’s like to be intuitive and introverted every day!”

Here’s a blog leading with “I am here I am whoever whenever wherever whichever you say I am … your choice: http://darklaquer.blogspot.com/2004/09/i-am.html

As noted above (cooking for engineers), a blog can be very popular.

If you want to increase the popularity of yours, here’s an article with tips on how to do that: http://www.blogger.com/knowledge/2004/09/promoting-your-blog.pyra . It contains such advice as write well if you really want to attract traffic, post a lot, keep the posts short and sweet (say, less than 1000 words per entry), and submit the blog site to search engines.

So jump right in and get your blog going. You’ll enjoy it, and so may a lot of other bloggers.