General Introduction
This blog post will be on the topic of social media platform
Blogger.com specifically and blogs generally. Let’s start with the basics, what
is a blog? A blog is your own website that you are going to update on an
ongoing basis. A blog is an online personal journal or diary. It is a place to
express yourself to the world. A place to share anything you want to share. Basically,
it’s anything you want it to be.
The Blog Evolution
The first blog was Links.net,
created by Justin Hall, as a college student in 1994. At that time the term
blog was not in use and Justin called it his personal homepage. In 1997 Jorn
Barger coined the term “weblog” to describe his personal home page. In 1998
Jonathan Dube was the first use a weblog for a media outlet to cover Hurricane
Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer. Then in 1999 “weblog” was shortened to
“blog” by a computer programmer Peter Merholz. In 2002 an important event occurred
giving bloggers credibility as a source of news. Bloggers pointed out a
statement by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott regarding U.S. Senator
Strom Thurmond. Lott stated the U.S. would have been better off if Thurmond had
been elected President in 1948. During that race, Thurmond was a strong
supporter of racial segregation. The mainstream media didn’t make the
connection of the statement until after Bloggers pointed this out. In 2005
blogs became mainstream and were estimated by one study to reach 32 million
Americans.
Purpose or function
According to Susan Gunelius, a blogging expert, there are
ten main reasons to start a blog: express your thoughts and opinions, market or
promote something, help people, establish yourself as an expert, connect with
people like you, make a difference, stay active or knowledgeable in a field of
on a topic, stay connected with family and friends, have fun and be creative.
Given those top ten reasons for blogging it is easy to imagine the potential
applications a blog could have for a business.
Use for Business
Blogs are a useful tool for businesses, in a nutshell,
because they offer a cost effective platform to
communicate in numerous and diverse
ways and are supremely customizable. According to Corey Wainwright @Corey_bos
from his article “Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing”
he states a blog: helps drive traffic to your website, converts that traffic into
leads, establishes authority, and drives long term results. The image below is
a great pictorial representation of how a blog can direct viewing traffic into
sales. I would also add that a blog is a great method to get feedback directly
from consumers. The feedback can then be used to drive changes in aspect of the
business.
Features
I am a layman when it comes to technical speak on the topic
of anything relating to computers, software, and the internet. So, to make this
post comprehensive I listed the features of Blogger.com as they appeared on its
Wiki page following a redesign of Blogger.com in 2006 as you can see below. But
I did want to specifically address some of the best features a blog can offer,
in my opinion. A blog can be designed by one person or have multiple authors,
it has various privacy options available, you can customize the layout of the
page, and other social media platforms can be linked to the blog.
•
Post time-stamping at publication, not at
original creation
•
Vertical re-sizing of the post editor. The size
is saved in a per-user, per-blog preference.
•
Link editing in compose mode
•
Preview dialog that shows posts in a width and
font size approximating what is seen in the published view
•
Placeholder image for tags so that embeds are
movable in compose mode
•
Toolbar with Google aesthetics
•
Full justification button, a strike-through
button
•
Extensive color palette
•
Numerous available languages
•
Country specific blogger addresses
•
Multiple system integration options
•
Blogger on mobile devices
Assessment
Overall, I think a blog could be an effective tool depending
on the type of business using it and how it is used. I believe the most important
aspect of using any social media platform in business is to not go down the
rabbit hole and keep its measureable effectiveness in perspective. With all of
the options and potential benefits using a blog offers it is easy to forget
there is method to measure the ROI using a blog. Therefore, it is my opinion a
blog can be useful to a business if it is used to solve very specific problems
or as a part of a mass media campaign to increase awareness. Blogger.com is the
only blog platform I have used so I am not able to compare it to other options.
My Experience
Preparing this first blog post was very stressful for me. I
have made hundreds of mini-blog posts through Facebook and Twitter and written
hundreds of formal papers for school assignments but this blog was different
from those experiences. I felt I had a greater responsibility to those who may
read this post because there is the potential for multiple people to read it.
Therefore, I felt this post should have formal formatting, the credibility of
sources should be double checked, and the sources should be referenced correctly.
I used multiple sources while gathering information to create this post and I
took more effort than I typically would to not present anyone’s ideas as my own.
I found the process of designing the blog itself to be kind
of fun because I could make it appear anyway I wanted. There were numerous
premade design features I could select from which made the process easy. There
were also options to tweak the premade design templates to make my blog more
original. However, the best aspect of the entire process was how easy designing
the blog was. The intuitive use of the platform allowed me to focus more energy
on making the blog look how I wanted it to and less energy figuring out how to
work its basic functions.
References
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-benefits-of-business-blogging-
ht#sm.000ll5n6z18dpdbktwe29zj0oncqv
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-business-blogging-faqs-ht#sm.000ll5n6z18dpdbktwe29zj0oncqv
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