TECHNOLOGY ASSIGNMENT TOPIC:- BLOG

 BLOG

A blog (a truncation of the expression "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries ("posts"). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.  

 CHARACTERISTICS OF BLOG

1. A Blog Must Always Be Dynamic

A common question about a blog is how it relates to a website – are these two essentially the same, or are there any differences between them? While websites are mainly presentation blogs are always intended to engage. A website is therefore static, as opposed to a blog which must be dynamic.

The information offered by websites is presented on static pages, in a form of an evergreen content that doesn’t require any updates. Blog posts, on the other hand, are like diary entries; they include a Publishing date and meta tags. New entries and regular updates are key for running any kind of blog.

2. Posts Are Displayed in Reverse Order

Unlike with a personal diary written in a notebook, blog entries are displayed in reverse chronological order – the newest posts being on top. The latest ones push previously published ones down the list, until they completely disappear from the landing page. Older posts are usually archived on the following pages, but they can also be organized by the month or year when they were first published.

3. Most Blogs Have the Same Structure

First comes a header with the menu or navigation bar to declutter the page and make a great first impression. It’s followed up by main content area on which blog posts appear either by order of publishing or by relevance. Down below are contact pages, privacy policies and relevant links, neatly arranged in a footer. A sidebar highlights favorite entries and displays social profiles and call-to-actions.

4. The Blog’s Leading Star Is Its Content

Different blogs publish different types of posts, though a majority of them relies on the power of the written word. Depending on the author’s intention, an article is typically an opinion piece, an instructional guide, or a news post. Monotonous chunks of text are separated with images or videos.

A blog post can also be a picture with little or no text. It’s a common trend in fashion and travel blogs, though it’s also not rare for business-related niches to publish infographics instead of instructional articles. But regardless of the medium, a blog is always defined by the quality of its published content.

 ADVANTAGES OF BLOG

• A Controlled platform to Express Yourself: The landscape has changed, but there are still countless blogs that serve as a platform for people to voice their ideas, thoughts, and feelings. This is a key advantage of blogging. Whether your passion is business, personal finance, cooking, politics, photography, or marketing, blogging gives you the opportunity to connect and network with like-minded individuals who share the same passions. This likewise applies to business, their business blogs provide a platform for them to communicate the brand values and interests to a broad audience. A blog is a great way to build awareness and garner support.

• Refine Your Communication Skills: Communications skills are greatly enhanced while blogging – the more you write, the better you become at it. For highly engaged business, it puts you on a learning curve that improves your corporate communications. Most professional bloggers write on a regular basis and therefore analyze and proofread their writing constantly. Keeping in touch with a broad range of trends, topic areas, and industry news. Feedback from your audience also helps improve your communication as you build well-balanced views on your topics of interest.

• Build Your Professional Network: One of the immediate advantages of blogging is that business and individuals involved in blogging can reap maximum advantages from building a useful professional community around it. Whether you are a solopreneur or blogging to market your business, building relationships with subscribers, contributors, and partner media properties will facilitate your blog’s growth. As you expand your online presence, connect with potential customers, promote their brand in a positive conversation, and even generate online revenue. Meanwhile, growing your online network has its own side benefits, such as gaining access to valuable software and tools, seminars, workshops, product unveiling, and other events.

• Become an Authority in Your Industry: A good, well written and thought out blog, full of useful posts and information is a great brand asset. A poorly written blog, rushed together, with low-quality posts full of typos and spelling errors could be doing more harm than good. A blog is an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and expertise. Publishing blog posts that are accurate, timely, relevant, and informative will eventually get the attention of industry insiders and earn you recognition as an authoritative source and thought-leader. Beyond the immediate results, businesses use content marketing to rank their posts in search engines, thereby generating residual leads and revenue.

• Build an Online Portfolio: For companies and entrepreneurs, gaining online visibility is one of the best ways to grow subscribers, leads and ultimately revenue. This can’t be achieved with a static corporate website. Creating blog content that is valuable, helpful, and/or entertaining is an effective way to grow your website’s authority, online rankings, and traffic. Blogging is also a great way for aspiring authors and freelance writers to build up an online portfolio. By showcasing their writing skills on large platforms with expansive reach, freelancers can grow their exposure and sign new clients.

DISADVANTAGES OF BLOG

• Time Consuming: Time is a limited resource and is especially scarce for small business owners. You can easily find yourself falling for one of the huge disadvantages of blogging if time management is not properly planned into the scheme of things. Blogging is time-consuming. As a blogger, you do get quicker at blogging the more you do it but that doesn’t necessarily help if you don’t have the time in the first place. For established business, the buy-in of management will be key so this may not be an issue as personnel can be trained and allocated to this assignment.

• Techie stuff: When starting out, a lot of businesses and individuals struggle with so many technical details. Including which content management platform to run, hosting service plans, web development designs, and the ongoing technical competence to manage contingencies. To start blogging on your own site, you can use platforms that allow blogging e.g. WordPress. but if your site doesn’t currently support blogging don’t put it off. There are plenty of places that you can blog offsite. There are so many free blogging sites available now, you can use WordPress.com, Blogger, Medium, Tumblr, Square Space. You can even blog using LinkedIn posts or Facebook notes.

• The danger of inconsistency: A dead blog or a poorly managed blog is worse than no blog at all. If you are going to blog on your own site or even one of the free blogging platforms it is important you maintain decent blogging practices – purposeful content and a regular posting schedule. At the very minimum, you should be blogging once a month and preferably more frequently than that. If you don’t think you’ll be able to keep to a consistent schedule use LinkedIn posts or Facebook notes instead of your own site. It’s less noticeable when you are infrequent on those platforms.

Blogging is more about building a strong and loyal community around your business. Your customers will get to know and trust you through your content. Understanding the advantages an disadvantages of blogging means you engage them a whole lot more.