If you’ve owned a computer or lived in the 21st
century you’re almost certain to have heard of a blog. Short for web-log, blogs
are an ever gro
Probably the most common reason for blogging is autobiographical;
just logging everyday life. Like your My Electric Diary from the 90s but
worldwide, public, and very rarely locked down with a password (that I could
never remember anyway). I’m often told that I should keep a blog or write a
book (many books have actually originated from blogs, actually!). My kids are
crazy and my everyday ramblings to my friends and family on my Facebook page
are often laughter inciting and utterly unbelievable. While I don’t keep a blog
(I should, really…) I love to log our everyday happenings. This was the reason
for the first blog and the reason many are still blogging today. Blogging can
be an excellent way to keep in touch with friends and family or to just log
your life so that you can reminisce on it later with all the details that were
fresh in your mind when you sat and tapped out a new entry. Some of my favorite
blogs are a bit of a hybrid between a do-it-yourself tutorial blog and a
personal blog with everything Pinterest worthy, delicious, or crafty filed away
in neat little posts complete with pictures and back stories. 
From personal blogging branched gossip blogging. Probably
the most notorious gossip blogger is Perez Hilton (a play on words mocking then
popular Paris Hilton). Perez quickly took his raunchy wit and love for drawing
mean things on people’s photos to the top of the gossip blogging world. Nielsen
estimated the visitors to perezhilton.com to be somewhere near 30 million a day
in 2007. Gossip
blogs quickly caught on and many other successful celebrity
blogging websites made their mark not long after Perez Hilton. (Who hasn’t
heard breaking news from TMZ?!). 
Blogs aren’t just for personal use or entertainment, a much
larger shift to business blogging has occurred as of late. Businesses are
jumping on board at lightning speed. Long are the days when they had to wait
for printed newsletters to update their patrons about the current happenings of
their business. Keeping a blog can help businesses and business minded
individuals alike seem more professional to potential clients and customers. As
a business blogger, you control the content. You can easily paint your business
in a positive light and highlight the best attributes that you want people to
take notice of. Through blogging and interaction with visitors a business owner
can develop a platform of trust and understanding with their clients. Business
blogging is not to be underestimated. Keeping a blog fun, fresh, and
informative can be the push you need to send your business to the next level.
What is your favorite way to blog? What are your favorite
blogs to read?
perezhilton.com
http://www.twelveskip.com/guide/blogging/468/11-top-reasons-why-blogging-is-important-for-business
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/tech/web/better-seo-why-blogging-more-important-ever?page=all
Great information and history of the blog. Some of this information was totally new to me. Being from a journalistic background, I was opposed to blogs in all forms because it was thought of as non-credible work. Also, the majority of the work that was available were forms of gossip or slander, which are universally frowned upon in the writing community. As I began internships, I saw how blogging could be used as a marketing tool to promote industries, products, and companies. Especially in the field of public relations, blogging was useful to market to the world the service of popularity of the client. Also, I began to look at blogs that peaked my interest. Blogs that highlighted music and movies that would give insight on the actors or movie news were ones I would began to view daily. Also, blogs that would write reviews appealed to me. I figured anyone writing up 1100-1600 words on different aspect of a movie or album insightfully were to be taken serious (given the information was accurate with supporting information). I would use these blogs to separate the rants that I would find on a lot of blogs I felt were nitpicking or that may not be a universal issue for all. I am appreciative of my first internship where keeping a blog was a daily task, it helped me to see how useful a blog can be to the company as well as the blogger. Blogging, if managed professionally, can actually serve as a medium for an amateur that has a niche or ambitions to write within that specialty. While in college, keeping a professional blog aided establishing my work as a columnist. I no longer think that blogging is low-level work for a professional writer, but just another medium or tool that gives a writer more accessibility to show their work!
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