Blogs

Digital Marketing-Unit-III

Dr. MOLOY GHOSHAL

 Blogs
• Definition: A blog (also known as “weblog”) is
an online journal or informational website,
displaying information in the reverse
chronological order, with the latest posts
appearing first.
• It is a platform where a writer or even a group
of writers share their views on an individual
subject.
• A blog is a type of website or part of a website.
 Blogging
• The act of creating and maintaining a blog.
• Is the act of posting a content on a blog (a web
log or online journal) or posting comments on
someone else’s blog.
• It is one of the most sought after activities on
the Web. Ever since its evolution way back in
1999 by Peter Merholz, it has become a
phenomenon amongst internet users for
personal, commercial, and business activities.
Contd…..
• Blogging is a way of expressing one’s thoughts,
ideas, opinions or experiences.
• Generally interactive in nature.
 Why blogging is so popular ???
1. It allows people to interact with each other.
2. Easy to start and maintain.
3. Frequently updated with contents.
4. Freedom to express your feelings.
5. You can learn a lot from blogs.
6. Doesn’t require that writers and contributors
know a lot about HTML.
7. Blogging is fun and for everyone. 
 Blog Types
1. Personal blogs
When blogging began in the late ’90s, the first type of blogger
appeared was the online diary bloggers.
These were people who wanted to take their daily journal
online to share their experiences, feelings, and innermost
thoughts with an audience.
For the personal blogger, there were no rules to follow or
themes to adhere. Personal bloggers today tend to follow
the same trajectory, although they no longer have to fight
the barrier to entry of setting up a website. They can
use Blogger, WordPress,  and similar networks to start a
blog in less than fifteen minutes and start sharing their
brilliance with the world.
2. Business blogs:
Business bloggers are those who blog for their
business. That could be a business they own or
the company they work for. The business
blogger’s goal is to gain more exposure, traffic,
and ultimately customers for their business.
Unlike the personal blogger, their writing is less
focused on themselves and more focused on
their business and their industry. A business
blogger will write about the topics that will
attract their ideal customers.
3. Professional blogs:
Professional bloggers are those who blog to make money
online.
In other words, their career goal is to earn a salary through
their blogging efforts.
Professional bloggers tend to use a variety of monetization
strategies to achieve this goal, including selling display ads,
creating information and digital products, promoting other
people’s products for a commission, and similar.
Professional bloggers tend to either focus on one blog or
many niche blogs to generate revenue. Each blog would
need to have the potential for attracting a large audience,
producing lots of traffic, and being a good fit for advertisers
and product sales.
4. Niche Blog:
Instead of merely focusing on broad topics, niche
blogs are very specific. Some of the niche blog
ideas might be food blogging, training programs
with one’s own weight, poems writing etc.
With a niche blog, one can focus more on a
particular topic thus making research rather easy.
It’s easier to identify the strengths and weaknesses
of that niche and write about things one know the
best. For e.g. Lifestyle blog, Home decor blog,
Health blog, Parenting blog, Sewing blog, Religious
blog etc.
5 Media Blog:
Media blogs are defined by the content they produce. If one
enjoys video blogging, then one is a vlogger.
If one curate content from other websites, he/she have a linklog.
If one post photos or art sketches on his/her blog, one is hosting
a photo blog or art blog. This type of blog is popular among
people in different fields.
The younger crowd is recording their video gameplay and sharing
it with people interested in that game.
Photographers can share tons of pictures they took on the last
trip.
People that running podcast can post audio files of the last
episode recorded.
 Advantages of Blog
1. Blogs are easy to create & maintain.
• To set up a blog can take as little as 10 minutes and it involves
just three simple steps (choose your blogging software,
register your account and start blogging). After creating your
blog, all you are required to do is to provide as many fresh
contents as you can on a regularly basis.
2. Blogs are Search Engine Friendly.
• Your posts and pages are automatically linked by blogs and
that enables search engines spiders to find, crawl and index
the blog. With relevant keywords in your blog Title, Meta tags,
and the URL pages you could have your pages ranking higher
in search engines.
 Advantages of Blog
3. Blogs attract more traffic for it fresh contents
• Readers are attracted to blogs because of it fresh regular contents and
if as a blogger you are passionate about what you write about, and
committed to providing fresh regular contents on it, thousands who are
also passionate about that topic will on a regular basis visit your blog
and if you keep updating it regularly with new contents, you will keep
them coming.
4. Blogs allows you to interact with your consumer base.
• Blogs allows you to interact you with your customers and to get their
feedback. Since blog offers you the option of enabling a comment field
to your posts where readers can give you their feedback.
5. Blogs have built-in RSS Feed
• RSS which means Really Simple Syndication syndicate recent posts and
deliver them to various blog search engines and when your readers
subscribe to your RSS Feed it automatically delivers your recent posts to
their inbox.
 Disadvantages of Blog
• All blogs are available to all the people. So, if
anyone writes anything negative, it could be
harmful in future.
• Personal blogs may be biased or contain
inaccurate information.
• Blogs can be time consuming. Finding time to
write regular updates can be chore.
• People may leave negative or inappropriate
comments.
 Blog structure

The appearance of blogs changed over time, and

nowadays blogs include different items. But, most
blogs include some standard features and structure.
Here are common features that a typical blog will
include:
• Header with the menu or navigation bar
• Main content area with highlighted or latest blog posts
• Sidebar with social profiles, favourite content, or call-
to-action
• Footer with relevant links like a disclaimer, privacy
policy, contact page, etc.
 Building a Blog

• Traditionally, blogs were used as personal

journals describing an individual's daily life, a
digital form of diary-entry available for the
public. However, nowadays, companies use
blogs as a marketing platform where they share
brand-related information, updates, and news
to engage their target audience.
Three things are needed to create a blog:
1. An idea
2. Ability to write in a conversational tone
3. A blogging platform (such as WordPress,
BlogSpot, Blogger, or one’s own hosting)
• The best part about creating blogs is that one
do not need any web designing skills; if one
have a way with words, he/she can build a
blog. The key here is to keep the readers
regularly updated.
Thanks