I always like to explain a Blog as a Journal of sorts. It’s a list of journal entries, called posts, you write that show up on your website in reverse chronological order. Each Blog Post has its own name and topic that you write about.
Before we move on let’s define some of the other terminologies you’ll hear in the blogging world.
Blog (n.) – an updated website or web page, run by an individual or small group, that writes in an informal or conversational style. Blogger (n.) – a person who writes material for a blog.
Blog Post (n.) – a piece of writing or other items of content posted on a blog
Blog (v.) – adding new content and updating a blog.
Blogging (v.) – the action of maintaining/writing a blog – While blogging,
I am a visual learner and teacher so I’m going to explain it in a way that you can relate to and get it!
I want you to imagine that you have this binder, which in this case will is your website. In this binder (your website) you have a divider named Blog. Once a day/week/month you write a journal entry, which is a Post, and you file it under blog.
These journal entries (blog post) can be about you, your business, your products or services. They can be informative, educational, personal or anything you want.
The more posts you write the greater chance you have to reach people. Can you imagine writing a post every single day for one year? You would have 365 pieces of content on your site that people have the ability to find and read.
I know, I know! That is crazy ridiculous to have time to write a post every single day and I can’t even do that, yet, there is hope.
Statistics show that “B2B companies that blog only 1-2X/month generate 70% more leads than those that don’t blog at all. In other words, blogging even a little bit can make a big dent in your leads goal if you before weren’t blogging at all.” (source)
So even if you blog 1-2 X a month you will still be ahead in the game and get those leads and sales.
The cool part of blogging is when people you don’t know, come from all over the World to read your journal entry (blog post) and begin commenting on it.
The History of Blogging
It all started a long, long time ago, all the way back in 1994 when a young man by the name of Justin Hall created his very first website called Links.net. Since websites were so new back then he called it his own personal homepage. He wrote about his own personal experiences and his journey learning coding.
Want to see what his site looked like? Take a look here [insert link to http://www.links.net/vita/web/start/original.html]
Fast forward 3 years and the year is 1997! Jorn Barger coins the phrase “weblog” because that’s the process he was doing to browse the web “logging the web.”
As with everything, we tend to shorten things up so, in 1999, programmer Peter Merholz shortens the name to “Blog.”
It wasn’t for another 5 more years that Merriam-Webster would declare the word “Blog” as their word of the year.
As you can see, Justin Hall was onto something even back then. Of course ever since then many things have changed and it’s definitely a lot easier to post blogs now then it was back then. ????
Best FREE Blogging Platforms
There are several free, user-friendly platforms, you can use to begin a blog and even build a website. I’m only going to mention the top 3 Free platforms you can get started on today!
Are you ready to create a beautiful blog, grow your community and share your ideas with the world? Let’s Chat!
WordPress – WordPress is a free and open-source content management system. This means that coders have the ability to change the code.
You have https://wordpress.com which is where you can build your website/blog for free and not have to worry about paying for a domain name and hosting.
Whereas https://wordpress.org is free also but you would need to pay for your own domain name and hosting. It still cost you nothing to use WordPress on your site though.
Blogger – Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. – [Source] Wikipedia
Wix – Wix is generally for building websites but has a pretty decent selection of stylish blog layouts to choose from. It’s super easy to use with its drag and drop design and super easy to set up the Blog.
Now that you know what a blog is and how it works, the history and platforms you can use, I want to share one last thing with you.
With all the different Social Media platforms, it is so easy to get caught up in sharing your content with them. You get instant feedback and great engagement. But sharing your content only on those Social sites could be detrimental.
I want you to keep this one thing in mind…
Your Blog…Your Website…it’s YOURS! The only way it’s going away is if you don’t pay for the domain name and hosting.
The Social sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and so many others, can shut down your account. I’ve seen it done to so many people that have built up a following. For no reason, their account was shut down and all that content, all those videos, all those images were GONE! In a blink of an eye and there was nothing they could do about it.
For this very reason, I always urge my clients to build up their content using their blogs. Use the Social Media sites to point people back to your website via a link to your blog posts.
This way, you will not lose all that hard work!
What blog will you start this year? Let me know in the comments below and share a link for others to see it.
Will it be for business, sharing your lifestyle, or maybe even your traveling experiences? Whatever Blog you start, just know there is a whole world out there waiting to hear all about it.
