Eric Kong's blog

I decided the type of website that my topic will be based on this assignment is blogs. Blogs serve many flexible and variety of functions and purposes, usually in either providing information or content of some sort. Not only can a blog provide support for other content or websites, but can also stand alone as its own platform. To me, blogging is specific content and information condensed to and for a specific audience and readers. The word “blog” is a shortened term for web log. The purpose of a blog varies from user to user, but each are accessible to anyone with internet access and has become a commonly used medium in today’s internet and business and marketing world since it’s rise from the early to mid 2000’s. Blog are also users by many different people of all types of backgrounds, professions, and walks of life, which is one of the many advantages provided by blogs, in that it allows personal interaction with the blogger and the readers/visitors, who may also share their thoughts by commenting.

One of the advantages of blogs is its versatility as a medium. Blogs have become integrated in almost every type of content and service available through the internet. Blogging can be based around social media and networking, photo sharing, information providing, specific content related, marketing strategy, and of course personal use. A log would be very advantageous for a content creator, such as a comic book artist. For example, if I were a comic book artist, I could use a blog not only for personal use, but to also provide information and updates regarding my comic book. I could also release illustrations of my content through a blog, as a way of providing free and extra content to supporters of my comic book. It would also be a good way to connect to supporters of my content. Another advantage is that setting up a blog is easy and costs nothing.

One of the disadvantages of blogging is time, due to blogging being such a time consuming activity in itself. Amanda Webb, author at spiderworking.com, states that “Blogging is time-consuming, my first post was under 100 words and took me half a day to construct and publish.” (Webb, “8 Disadvantages of blogging for business that you need to know about before you start”, spiderworking.com). Much of this is due to editing, re-reading and proof-reading. Another disadvantage is inconsistency, or rather remaining consistant. Webb states that, “A dead blog is worse than no blog at all”, and that it is crucial and best to have a regular posting schedule. Overall however, the advantages of blogging can outweigh the disadvantages, and can be a very good support for content, information, and anything business or market related, and can even earn income for the blogger.

Setting up a blog is easy, and best of all, it is free to anyone and for anyone to use. No coding methods is used or required by the blogger. First, you will need to choose a blogging platform, many choose wordpress, which has over 72 million active users. Although one might think to use a platform that is free, there are advantages in using a platform that cost a little bit of money. Platforms that charge a little bit of money every month usually come with better customization options, features, more secure, and are known as self-hosting blogs. A self-hosted blog is one that resides on your own server. Self-hosted blogs are considered more professional and have shorter domain names than free blogs. For a self hosted blog, you will need two things, a domain name and web host, which is the home of your blog address. Since a self0hosted blog is much more customizable than a free one, the blogger can create as many pages and links necessary to provide content, however, free blogs normally only have links dating back to older posts or pages to go back to past and older posts.

Maintenance for a blog is normally easy. Hosts, such as WordPress will conduct their own maintenance to keep it’s server secure, however there are also little things that a blogger can do themselves in order to maintain their blog. One of the things is backing up the blog, the other tasks are optimizing the images, and building the internal links. Some of these tasks can be done using software or apps such as as plug-in to do. An example of this would be the plug-in known as BackUpBuddy, which can backup your blog and can restore or migrate the blog if needed. Optimizing images can be done by using high-quality and efficient image hosting sites such as iStock photos. Blogger, Ileane, of Basicblogtips.com, states that “When I first started this blog I was using Blue Host at the time, and my blog was really slow and and as a result, Blue Host would “throttle cpu usage” (Ileane, 03/11/2012, My Routine for Blog Maintenance on Basic Blog Tips, basicblogtips.com). With b7uilding internal links, you can decide what anchor texts you want to link to, which help determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.

There are blogging software, such as platforms like WordPress which requires a web host to install and run on, that can be installed after you’ve set up a hosting server and domain name. After the software installation, you should be able to login and customize your blog. WordPress is software and a blog script that will allow you develop your blog with many features that are designed to increase your experience as a blogger. There is also software that can be used outside of the platform provided software such as BackUpBuddy, as stated before, which can perform certain tasks or functions if the blogger is not comfortable with the provided features of the platform.

Many types of customers, clients, individuals, and companies use blogs, either for information gathering or sharing, promoting or reviewing of a product, sharing insight or personal experiences that may relate to a specific topic. Blogging has even been credited for the help of the overall growth of the web, as many people now either write blogs read them. As the internet and business has become more interwoven over the years and created what is called e-commerce, blogging has also found it’s place in this mix as becoming an integral marketing tool for all types of businesses today. In-depth customer reviews have become common not only among customers, but enthusiasts of all different backgrounds and fields, offering rich and diverse insight expertise to all sorts of products and handlings of a company or business. Topics vary greatly from blogger to blogger, as people offer not just insight into products or things related to business, but things in life in general. The types of businesses that use or utilize blogs also vary greatly as well, as nowadays almost every type of business makes use of online shopping or e-commerce. One of the reasons many businesses has shifted to utilizing blogs is that blogs have been proven to be reliable, and have with stood the test of time by staying relevant today where snapchat and Instagram have become very successful.

Many major companies and businesses use blogs for varying purposes, such as Coca Cola (titled Coca Cola Unbottled), WalMart, Allstate, Whole Foods, Disney, Home Depot, General Electric, Caterpillar, Celanese, ADP and many more. These blogs contain images, personal stories of employees, customer reviews on products and services, and company history, to provide motivation and standards of the company as well as to display the connection we all share with each other as human beings. Many companies also connect and cooperate with each other through blogs by publicizing partnerships. Partnerships may also include clients from varying businesses and countries all over the world. Customers will also utilize company blogs in order to keep up to date with company products or to learn about the company as a whole and their objectives. Individuals can use blogs to look for specific topics and insight that is hard to find in more commercial or general websites.

Blogs seem to generally be viewed as dynamic websites, however, software such as WordPress sort of bridges the gap between dynamic and static due to its layout customization features. Lisa Irby, Author at 2createawebsite.com, states that “Blogs are dynamic, because the posts and categories automatically display the content in reverse chronological order.” (Lisa Irby, “Blogs & Static Websites - What's the Difference?”, 2createawebsite.com). Other website that interested me were ecommerce and business related, as well as content and information providing websites. However, the versatility of the type of support that a blog can bring for any type of field is just too great to not write about. If blogs have proven one thing, it is that they are here to stay for now, and are not in danger of more modern platforms such as Instagram or snapchat. I think out of those three platforms, blogs seem to be used in a more productive way.

REFERENCES

Amanda Webb

8 Disadvantages Of Blogging For Business That You Need To Know About Before You Start – Blogcentric #32

June 23, 2016

spiderworking.com

https://spiderworking.com/blog/2016/06/23/disadvantages-of-blogging/

Ileane

My Routine for Blog Maintenance on Basic Blog Tips

03/11/2012

http://basicblogtips.com/

Lisa Irby

Blogs & Static Websites - What's the Difference?