A history of Blogging


Blogs started in 1999 when Blogger was introduced. Bought by Google in 2003, Blogger is a free blogging tool.Wordpress started in 2003.


Wright (2006) cited in Jin and Fisher Liu (2010) defined blogs as self publishing systems on the internet.

Blogs are

•          A way of sharing information.
•          Useful method for multiple authors to contribute content.
•          Useful for news or crises sites.
•          Also used as personal diaries, opinion pieces, political statements, photo diaries and types of websites.

Why Blog?

When I look back and when we started our blog the key issue was that initial websites did not have a Content management system (CMS) and it was expensive to update websites. Every update involved briefing the web designer and paying additional fees. Blogs were a cheaper and often faster alternative way of sharing news and information.

Other benefits with blogging was that most Blog Tools are free. One of the key issues is that blogs are useful for SEO as the ‘recency’ of items means they are found by search engines.

Corporate Blogging has developed as an art form and Ahuja and Medury (2010) claim that Corporate Blogging is primarily about three attributes:
  1. Information
  2. Relationships
  3. Knowledge Management

Other Blogging Benefits for Businesses include

•          To foster community and conversation.
•          To drive traffic to the product website.
•          To serve as a medium for interaction with consumers.
•          A tool to interact with partners, marketing intermediaries, associates and components of the external environment.

Comparison of Blogging Tools



BlogFrog is a new type of blog software, mainly aimed at ‘Mommy Bloggers’ who want to share info and build community quickly. It is clever as it is available with Facebook login.

http://theblogfrog.com/learn/forblogs.aspx

Examples of blogs using Blogfrog include:
http://www.mamakatslosinit.com/blog/
http://www.buriedwithchildren.com/

How to Start Blogging

To get started, click on the links below:
WordPress.com - Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYi4_COZMU
Google Blogger http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=112498

8 Considerations when Starting a free Blog

Whether or not to start a blog depends on your business and its aim. Key considerations include:

  1. What is the focus of your blog?
  2. What are your objectives?
  3. Why should people read it?
  4. URL – what do you want to call your blog?
  5. And is the name available?
  6. How will you get traffic?
  7. How will avoid ‘post fatigue?’
  8. How will you get viewers to interact?

6 Considerations when Managing a Blog

When you’ve started your blog, the dynamics change and there are new issues to consider:
  1. Who is responsible for the blog?
  2. How is it integrated into the marketing strategy?
  3. Content: original, curated or guest authors?
  4. How often should you post?
  5. How long is a post?
  6. How do you get viewers engaged?
  7. How do you measure results?

Useful Content

What works on blogs? Usefulcontent for blogs includes:
•          Downloadable documents that offer feature comparisons of your product to your competitors' products.
•          Case studies.
•          FAQs.
•          Useful information for customers.

Analytics

In terms of analytics, Blogger provides its own version of analytics. it is less detailed than Google Analytics, but provides a good overview. It's easy to add Google Analytics to your blog and get more details.