Blogging – Can Anyone can Do it?

Blogging 

What Is Blogging?

To put it, in simple terms, blogging is nothing but writing clearly on the online space. As a Blogger, you can do this as a part of your website or for developing your own brand

Since the days, that blogging has started, it has changed the way that internet solutions are seen by Google and the user

A nicely written blog on any subject evinces interest and positive favorability with your Target Group (TG) and in the eyes of the market that you are operating in

Bloggers are now, more matured due to advancement of technologies and tools. They are now able to write more effectively in a short span

The blogging industry has its roots almost four decades back, when the earliest writings were inspired by traditional media like TV and Radio

Blogosphere: The blogosphere refers to the global community of individuals who write and maintain personal blogs on the internet. The term is generally not used to describe corporate blogs and publications

As the online engagement started to increase, the breadth of topics with an in-depth understanding of each topic started to flourish as bloggers started taking center stage

For online marketers, since Google was looking at the website content only, in earlier days – the focus on blogs was limited

However, over the years, Google has also evolved to identify, if your website is focused only on Selling or also interested in Adding Value

The direct way of adding value is to give more free information and blogs are the best way to achieve this. However, the additional benefit that has come along with this is the direction that Blogging is now, a revenue stream on its own

History of blogging

Blogging was earlier termed as Weblogs. This was the earliest form when the advent of online presence through promotions was limited

Slowly, this form of writing found its way into all the forms of marketing starting from content creation on websites and today you can find posts on FB and Twitter – which are forms of blogging

Now, the term – blog has become so omnipresent that it is seen as a part of every online marketing story coined in 1990s

Having a blog in that period meant that you had the technical know-how to create and set up that blog.

Optimization of that blog was not something people gave much thought, because search engine algorithms were just getting started to index the web, and had yet to learn how to interpret online content.

Over the years, Blogging has moved from being just one of the elements of marketing to taking the center stage when it comes to making SEO strategies

When WP (WordPress) which is the largest CMS (Content Management System) got started in 2003, the whole positioning of blogging changed as it became easier with plugins like Yoast SEO

This plugin helped bloggers to understand the concept of Flesch Reading Score, which is now seen as the backbone of creating proper blogs – both in the eyes of Google and the customers

Since WP is a CMS that does need a great technical know-how, any newbie can start blogging and reach his /her TG is a faster time-frame. The reach to international markets is also at a substantial quicker pace

There are currently more than 600 million blogs on the internet out of the 1.7 billion websites. The number of active bloggers in the United States is estimated to hit 31.7 million in 2020.

86% of content marketers use blog posts as part of their marketing strategy. The average blog post today has 1236 words

Some key pointers:

• The blog creation in these days are in more than 200 different areas like fashion, food, marketing etc.
• Almost 4.57 billion people were active internet users as of July 2020, encompassing 59 % of the global population
• Since its creation in 1983, the Internet has grown exponentially in terms of numbers of networks connected to it
• Of all professions, bloggers make a significant impact on the customers and can make significant incomes
  • Some highest-earning bloggers
    1. Moz: $44.9 million per year.
    2. PerezHilton: $41.3 million per year.
    3. Copyblogger: $33.1 million per year.
    4. Mashable: $30 million per year.
    5. TechCrunch: $22.5 million per year.
    6. Envato Tuts+: $10 million per year.
    7. Smashing Magazine: $5.2 million per year.
    8. Gizmodo: $4.8 million per year.
  • This also has opportunities that can get you to work in different markets

A blog – What is it actually?

A blog is a website or a web page that is regularly updated with new content. Content is displayed as blog articles or posts, which are usually shown in reverse chronological order, so the newest are visible first.

In the earlier days, blogs were written on an individual basis, now its handled by a team as it is very important aspect of marketing

Since blogging is now being seen as an important aspect of adding value to the customer, firms are now seeing blogging as important part of website

Blogging is a dynamic webpage model as it is system where there is a potential for customers to interact with the blogs and it’s not possible with other pages

It is seen as social media platform as it is got a pattern of your TG being able to share their thoughts through sharing as any SM offers

Blogosphere

The blogosphere is the term coined to include all blogs and the way these blogs are interconnected. It was around two decades back that this was coined

This was the time, when bloggers started seeing themselves as part of a community that was adding value at a significant level

Being part of the Blogosphere was also a contributing factor of the blogs being seen as a Social Media Marketing solution

There is significant difference in the way bloggers look at the business requirements and the website owners. The latter looks at blogging only from means of generating income

This industry has a constructive model as bloggers comment and share each other’s blogs

A blogroll is essentially a list of links that appears in your sidebar. The term “blogroll” was originally used because it was a list of links to other blogs, but you can include links to any sites.

Blog vs. website

The key element to understand is that both the platforms provide information, but the way that they provide is what differentiates them

The former is more focused on providing a particular set of data points and is limited to serving a select set of audience. Names like Neil Patel & Avinash Kaushik started off as bloggers

However, websites are platforms that have a larger requirement and focuses on aiding customers in fulfilling their requirements

Blogging Platforms

As a blogger, you would need to decide, if you are looking at this as a revenue generation mode or for hobby purposes only

You need to choose a free or paid platform respectively, depending on your orientation. Introduction of the CMS platforms like WP have made life easier for the bloggers

 Some of its details are mentioned below:

WordPress

As per some of the latest reports, almost 40% of the sites (1.2 billion) are on WP which is almost 455 million sites

The reason for such a proliferation in less than two decades is because of the ease of creating sites / blogs on this CMS platform – Anyone with Zero coding knowledge can create the sites in few hours

An added benefit is that it works on a simple technology of open-ended structures with plugins that makes it a great place for both the main players – Google & your customers

The platform comes in two flavors – .org & .com. Each have different solutions being offered and as a business owner, you need to decide, which is the solution that will aid you

.com is a Website Builder and .org is a CMS. From a development standpoint, both are similar, but the latter works through plugins and hence, sometimes seen more efficient

One more reason that sometimes a .com is chosen over a .org is that the hosting requirements and support need to be handled by you directly

A website builder, typically takes care of hosting, but the con is that the control is sometimes – not 100% and this sometimes, needed

Blogger.com – This is a platform being used sparingly, if you are looking at blogging as your only business direction ad not using blog as a part of your website and hence your marketing strategy

This was acquired by Google, a few decades back and hence you will need a Google account to work on this platform and the blogs here are called blog post

Ease of use and creating it faster are some reasons that this platform is being used. But. Lack of customization is a stumbling block, but, its two features make it a good solution

• Adding location to posts through geotagging options
• Country-specific extension in the URL

Blog is hosted on Google servers, which are considered as very reliable (but offers no option to upgrade to self-hosted solution)

• Drag-and-drop templates editing interface
• It supports Google’s AdSense service enabling bloggers to generate revenue from blogging
• It can be easily integrated with Google+ encouraging user engagement
• Mobile application is available for blog management
• Blog description is limited to 500 characters (HTML markup is not supported)
• Individual blog pages are limited to 1MB
• Blogger Product Forum offers online support

Despite having some good pointers as discussed above, it’s a platform that not many professionals or firms take on due to various reasons

Tumblr – It is a website focused on small posts (Also called as Micro-blogging) started in 2007 and as of May 2019, there were 465 million blogs followed by almost similar number of users

Blogging Essentials

There are a few critical elements, in addition to the platform that are important to ensure that the blogs reach the right TG at the right time

Hosting

Hosting has a lot of technical components to it. However, the key concept is that any hosting service main work is to store the content that is created online.

There are two ways this can be done: By having your own service or using some platforms, typically on SM (Social media) like a FB or LinkedIn

In the former case, you will use the services of providers like Blue host / GoDaddy / Host Gator and others. If you use SM platforms then they handle this work

In the case of using SM platforms, you just upload the content, but here the customization is limited and hence there are pros and cons

Domain name

The URLs that you see is the search bar is called the domain name. It can be with any extensions like a .org or .com or .net

Just like the hosting service you can go a free domain service when you use bigger platforms. However, if you decide to invest, then you have options like Name Cheap / GoDaddy

https://www.domain-name.com

• https – Protocol
• www – Sub Domain
• domain-name – Domain Name
• .com – Top Level Domain (TLD)

Domain Name + TLD: Root Domain (What you can register)

Creating a Blogging Strategy

There are multiple reasons, why you might write a blog, but there are few critical directions that are important as it’s the strategy behind a blog that plays a major part

The number of potential customers currently and the growth that a blog can generate should be the core strategy behind any writing

A proper blog always fits into the overall business requirements of your firm and should be looked as a leveraging mechanism

Business blogging is a strategy used in online marketing where the goal is to use blogging to improve your online business.

The main requirement of any business is more revenue and that is possible in the online space with more traffic.

Business blogs do that work to the core and that’s how the structure of blog is also there. There are enough research done to validate this direction that Business blogs increase traffic significantly

This is also a great part of your content strategy as when you write proper content, the SEO juice also increases increasing the chances of indexing by Google

You also create an extra material to share on social media, in a newsletter, etc. Each new content material represents more value to your audience, and it helps you increase your online influence

Since blogging has become a mainstream strategy for business, it is now very important that you have a proper team that handles this

Also, its critical that you take blogging seriously into the next decade

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