It’s a Blog-eat-blog-World

Michael Browne  //  November 28, 2011

Blogs have become an essential part of social media in recent years. What started out as a form of online personal expression with sites such as LiveJournal has expanded to become a source of credible news and information, especially if the blogger is already a known credible source. Blogging has become a popular vehicle for individuals to comment on local and global issues and events in their own words. They give a voice to those who, up until recently, didn’t have an avenue to express opinions on topics important to them.

Without actually realizing it until recently, I’ve been blogging in some shape or form for over six years. I briefly had a LiveJournal account before I bought some server space, registered my own domain name, and came up with a blog that was completely my own design. At the time, my blog was still in the primitive stage of blogging. My first blog was a space for uploading photos and sharing personal thoughts and stories. Blogging for me was simply an excuse to write and provided an outlet for me to do so. However, with the arrival of Facebook, my blog became somewhat obsolete; everything I had used it for could suddenly be done with more ease through Facebook. The information I had been sharing through blogging could be accessed by more people through Facebook than would ever visit my website. So I had to re-invent it.

After several years maintaining a website and blogging, I’ve learned that in order to build and retain a consistent readership, you need a purpose. You must write about topics your audience wants to read. In most cases, nobody will want to read about my day or what I’m planning for the weekend. There has to be a central focus to base a blog around, and you have to be knowledgeable about it. These topics can include a wide range of subject matter like politics, new and upcoming technology, current events and news, music and entertainment, parenting, or social issues like LGBT or gender topics. The focus needs to be narrow enough to appeal to a specific demographic but broad enough to be able to keep it ongoing. It also needs to be a topic or theme that you as the writer are going to be consistently interested in, as you’ll be writing about it regularly.

Once you figure out your focus, you can set up your blog. There are many hosting sites online specifically for blogs, and each of them have great features that may appeal to you and your focus. Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress are  a few of the free hosting sites that instantly come to mind. These particular sites come with a variety of functions that may appeal to your blogging senses. If you’re concerned about having an amateur-looking blog, don’t worry. Many reputable blogs use these sites and they still have a large and very devoted following. If you’re a stickler about the layout and you are familiar with coding, you can do what I do and host your own. WordPress, for instance, offers an open source blogging tool that you can install on your own server and use to maintain your blog. It’s wonderful!

Once you’ve set everything up, finished your design, and written a few entries, your next step is to build a network. Doing this is the most challenging aspect of blogging because you’re essentially competing with thousands of blogs on a theme similar to the one you have chosen. You must be prepared to be consistent with your content but also ensure you’re accurate. Successful blogs are those that readers can trust to be credible and reliable with what they post. One of the biggest advantages of using a blogging site as your host is the ability to link up with other blogs in the same way as “following” people on Twitter. Tumblr, for example, gives you a newsfeed where you can scroll through recent posts of the people you follow and “share” or “like” posts by them. Likewise, they can do the same for your posts. This is a great way for your pieces to spread through their networks and reach a wider audience. And of course, you can always share your blog posts on networking sites you’re already familiar with such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. However, be careful of spamming.  Constant self-promotion is one of the most prominent reasons people de-friend or unfollow.

Having a blog can be beneficial to you as well as your readers. It can help build and strengthen your writing skills, test your ability to research and present a topic you’re passionate about. Blogging can further open your eyes to your chosen focus and, if successful, help to build a following that could benefit you in the future. Should you decide to keep at it once you’ve started, it’s important to remain consistent. It’s hard to build a following but it’s easy to lose it. Extended periods of downtime and your devoted readers will have already forgotten about you and moved on. There are perhaps millions of active blogs online and if you don’t deliver, someone else will. Remember to be knowledgeable about what you’re writing about, angle your pieces from an interesting perspective that likely no one else will, and be responsible about what you write. Know that once it’s uploaded online, it’s tattooed there. What you post on your blog can exist forever. So, make sure you write material that represents you positively, both now and in the future.