What is A Blog?

I’ll start by saying that it would be a mistake to look at blogs as a cheap version of a website; a blog (short for weblog) is a web version of a never ending roll of paper towel (did I hear that somewhere else?) with each ply being a post that can be identified by a title, body where your content goes - text, pictures, video, graphics etc. - published date, tags (simply keywords that tags your post when someone searches a word related to your blog, or that particular post - more on that in other posts).

Two great things about a blog vs. a website - for me - are its ease of use even by the most non-techie person to publish content in real time and the ability for visitors to interact with you by leaving comments.

Let’s say you’re a hair-stylist based in California. Inspiration strikes you and you’d like to share it many people at once and would love to hear what others have to say - feedback.Blog will let you do just that without losing sleep over technical issues. You write that post, share a picture/video of a design you’ve come up with and post it. Give it a title, let’s say, “Can This Solve the Glue Problem with Extensions?” Before you know it your friends from all corners of the world will read that and reply. And they’re not restricted to simply writing a reply; they can post a video, link to one, or be inspired to write a post of their own. The task might seem daunting at first - upload this, link to that, attach this, detach that.

Not so. You already do that with your email. You write a subject headline, you write content on the body, and you attach videos or pictures and send it to your friends. A blog lets you do the same but you have more options.Above is just one way to make a blog be your publishing platform. There are many different ways you can  utilize a blog. All you need is some tech know-how and fire up your imagination.Okay, then, let’s move on and I’ll try to present you some background and tech tips on blogs. There’s no way for me to cover everything related to blogs, but you know how to Google, don’t you? 

‘What is a Blog?’ type articles and posts:

1. @ Wikipedia. 

2. First Blog and Other Facts. 

3. Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, is perhaps the only blog you’ll need to visit because he’s simply the best reference guide to blogging. Here’s a tip for beginners, followed by numerous posts by him tackling aspects of blogging. 

4.  Google’s Blog Search. Searching gives you results from blogs only. Pretty cool!

5. Can’t end this without a video. “…In Plain English” is a video series by Common Craft.