What is a blog on the Internet and why is it needed. What is a blog

This is the question novice users ask. Some of them understand what a blog is, but will not understand how a blog differs from a website.

Well, let's understand, in fact, everything is simple.

A blog is a type of website. There are news sites, there are forums, there are online stores, and there are blogs. These are all types of sites.

How does a blog stand out from other sites and why is it usually started?

To answer this question, it is important to say that blogs are divided into 5 types and each of them carries a specific purpose for its creation.

Here are the 5 types:

Personal blog.
Professional blog.
Brand blog.
News blog.
Non-traditional blogs.

Now let's look at each type in more detail.

Personal blog- is an ordinary Internet diary. In such a blog, they usually write about personal events. Entries in such a diary most often have approximately the following names: “Yesterday I went to the cinema, I liked it”, “I bought jeans - check it out”, etc.

Basically, such diaries are kept for themselves and are usually visited only by the author himself and a dozen of his friends, who also keep such diaries.

If a person is public and writes interesting notes, then his journal is visited by many other people with whom the author does not know personally. An example of such a person is the actor Yevgeny Grishkovets and his diary

As a rule, such blogs are maintained on free services, for example, LiveJournal, popularly just LiveJournal (www.livejournal.ru)

Professional blog.

Typically, such blogs gather around them a large audience of people who are also interested in this topic. They read articles, comment on them, give the author new ideas about what to write about.

When such a blog begins to gain momentum in terms of attendance, it begins to bring profit to its owner. Money usually comes from the sale of advertising, as well as through the use of contextual advertising systems on the blog like Yandex.Direct and Google.Adsense.

You can also use information products on your topic to make money on such blogs.

As a result, a professional blog turns into an additional source of income. Ideally, the blog becomes the main activity and the main source of income. There are many such bloggers in the West. And in 1-2 years we will have a lot.

If a person is engaged, for example, in construction, then he can freely create his own professional blog. For example, here is a blog dedicated to the construction of Build Sam.

Brand blog.

Such a blog is usually used to promote the brand of a particular person or an entire company. This is the type of blog I use in my work.

I have a main business that brings me money through websites and the sale of training courses. And the blog is a place for me where I can post more personal content.

Why not post them on the main site?

Because the format of the posts that are posted on the blog is usually different from the format of the materials that are posted on content sites.

If on the main site I post lessons and articles on site building, then on the blog I write notes of a more personal nature, which are also related to this topic.

For example, I will post the lesson “How to create a registration system on a site” on the main site, but I will post a report from some web design conference with my photos on the blog.

Do you catch the difference?

The blog usually also focuses on useful material, but most often it is tied to the author - either it is a statement of a point of view, or a description of an event, or just a useful experience.

And such a blog is great for promoting the name of the author. Many people begin to learn about him, who later turn into regular customers in the main business of such a person.

At least that's how it happens for me.

Another use case for branding a blog is to use a blog as your main site.

A good example is the blog of the famous Western copywriter Michel Fortin - http://www.michelfortin.com

Its main activity is writing sales texts for various goods and services. And he uses the blog to promote his name and earn extra money. He writes useful articles and posts them on the blog. This blog gathers his potential customers around him and when one of them needs an advertising text, they already know who to contact.

News blog.

If the authors write a lot and with high quality, then such a blog usually becomes the center of niche news and a large number of people who are interested in this topic and want to be aware of all the new products and news begin to visit it.

When the blog promotion stage will pass and the target audience recruited, the blog owners take on its monetization (obtaining income from the blog). Advertisers are searched for on the blog, contextual advertising is hung up, affiliate programs and other ways of making money on the blog are used.

Other variations of blogs.

This engine is so flexible that it allows you to create many different variations of blogs. Therefore, on the Internet you can find photoblogs, portfolio blogs, catalog blogs and other blog options that differ from the classic blog.

How to create your own blog?

As for the technical side of creating your own blog, this is already a topic for a separate article.

Here I will only say that the most popular solutions today are the aforementioned WordPress blogging engine, which is deservedly considered the leader in this area, and the Movable Type script, which has been holding the second position for many years.

That's basically all that I wanted to tell you about blogs in this article. I hope I managed to convey to you the concept of a blog, and perhaps you have already outlined for yourself some of the options for a blog that you would like to start.

Good luck!!!

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Hello friends.

Vasily Blinov is in touch, today I want to analyze one very important question: why do we need a blog? I often write to in social networks about the fact that I am running my blog, announcing various news, and people do not understand why I am doing this. Probably 99% of my acquaintances, who are not connected in any way with the Internet in terms of earnings, do not understand the idea of waging their own blog.

To be honest, even some bloggers do not understand why they blog, so there are millions of abandoned blogs on the Internet. First of all, to start blogging, you do not need to buy hosting, domain, compose semantic core etc.

First you need to answer yourself the question: “why is it needed?” and write the answer to this question in a conspicuous place so as not to forget. A blog will be successful not from a beautiful design or perfectly written articles, but from the desire to engage in it.

It seems to me that any success in life depends on desire and meaning, and not on talent or luck, so let's deal with these two points together.

Why do you need a blog?

Why do people create them? I think everyone has their own original reason for starting a blog, but I'll talk about mine. The idea of creating a blog came to me from a book, but I don't remember which one.

Once upon a time (2 years ago) I was engaged in network marketing, I also got the idea to do it from the books of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series by the American author Robert Kiyosaki. In general, from his books there was some kind of shift in the convolutions of the brain, but this is a separate article.

So, while doing network marketing, I learned such a thing as a “personal brand on the Internet”. Namely: I wanted to create such a page so that a person who is interested in my network business can easily go to my site and find out all the necessary information.

A personal brand is now necessary for any person who wants to make money through the Internet, it is on it that trust is built. The number of sales or orders for your services depends on the trust of the audience, whether you are a freelancer or a businessman. So my first reason is personal brand.

The second reason I had already in the process of searching for the answer to the question "", then for the first time I heard that on the blog you can earn. This is the main reason most people start blogging. And also the main reason why they give up the idea of leading it.

Not everything is as simple as it seems. To bring a blog to an income of at least 20 thousand rubles a month, a beginner needs years of work and investments much more than 20 thousand rubles. Of course, this process can be accelerated by turning to professional bloggers. Even recently appeared school of bloggers, where well-known webmasters and bloggers of Runet share their experience gained over many years.

Turning to professionals is the shortest way to achieve results. After giving up the idea of networking for certain reasons, I continued to look for options to change my quality of life. I wanted to travel, and I began to look for ways to earn money through the Internet. I started freelancing, but to no avail, even in the red.

It turned out that in order to successfully engage in it, knowledge was needed: how to offer your services correctly, how to line up orders, etc. Trying on my own for about six months, I decided that it was better to turn to professionals. Having paid them for knowledge, in a month I began to receive as much as I paid for education. I wrote about it on this blog. Therefore, if you want to learn some kind of income or profession on the Internet, go to someone who already has visible results and torment him day and night. As a rule, these are open people and ready to tell how they did it.

I digress a little from the topic of the article. So the third reason, it's a little extended, is self-development. In self-development, I have a lot of meanings for blogging. This is now, one might say, the main reason why a blog is needed and why I did not abandon it. I'll give you a couple of examples and move on.

Firstly, these are constant thought processes: how to do it, what to write, how to write, etc. Secondly, by expressing your thoughts, you begin to learn to think independently, to have your own point of view, to poke around in yourself, to recognize yourself. Thirdly, you become a more open person. I remember what a problem it used to be for me to write a comment or ask someone a question. What will people think, how will I look? .. Now you don’t even think about it, you just take it and do it.

In fact, I have a lot of such meanings and everyone has them, they just need to be understood and also written down on paper. By the way, if you already have your own blog, do not forget to tell a little about it and about yourself with a comment. Why did I write it in vain? The fourth reason lies precisely in this.

The fourth reason to blog is communication. As I said before, by communicating with people, we learn something new, especially when we communicate with bloggers. Bloggers are those people who answer any question when you are looking for something in a Yandex, Google or other search engine. For example, the answer to the question: Why do you need a blog? which you are currently reading.

Sometimes from communicating with them you learn random things that you could not even guess about before. All problems lie in ignorance. Why are we on this moment do not earn a million rubles a month? The answer is simple - because we do not know how to earn so much.

Let's sum up the answer to the question

Self-development, the meanings of blogging.
Personal brand, people's trust.
earnings, passive income from the blog.
Communication, new knowledge and opportunities.

But how??? The article is called “5 reasons: why do you need a blog?” At this point, I want to turn to my blogger friends, let everyone who read this article share the fifth reason why you blog.

And I would also like to hear the opinion of those people who do not yet have their own blog and those who once tried to create it, perhaps created it, but abandoned it.

That's all for today, thank you all.

We have released a new book, "Social Media Content Marketing: How to get into the head of subscribers and make them fall in love with your brand."

A blog is a site where author's materials can be published.

More videos on our channel - learn internet marketing with SEMANTICA

A blog is a diary. For example, a person is engaged in wood burning. And he just wants to share his crafts with people on the Internet. Sometimes talk about some burning techniques, show how he does it.

This will be a blog on the Internet. You can publish content on different platforms. For example, a popular resource is LiveJournal, where each person can maintain their own.

Types of blogs

You can divide blogs by the way they are maintained - using paid and free service, by the number of authors - personal, collective, by the method of submission - podcast, text, video.

They can also be classified according to the purposes for which they are conducted:

thematic;
general;
fashion;
business resource.

Thematic blog

It is dedicated to one topic. For example, cats. And all the content - it can be different - is related to pets in one way or another. Here comes the interested reader. If he ended up in a thematic blog, it means that this content is of interest to him. And you already know what your target audience needs.

fashion

It is especially popular among famous personalities - musicians, athletes, actors. Here you can find information about the most interesting events in the life of an idol, his attitude to certain incidents, ask a question, learn about upcoming events, and so on. A public figure does not always maintain his personal blog on the Internet on his own, often specially hired people do this.

Business blog

It serves to promote a product or service, as well as a whole business project. Despite the variety of topics covered in his publications, they will all revolve around the advertised product. The publications of such an online magazine are hidden or explicit advertisements, but if properly presented, they are of some benefit to readers and may be of interest.

Other types of blogs

Depending on the nature and type of content, Internet blogs are divided into several types:

Photoblogs - the basis will be photos, pictures, gifs;
Vlog - short videos and interviews according to the chosen topic;
Text - contact with readers is through text articles and comments;
Musical - the basis of the content will be musical works;
Blog podcast - a blogger communicates with subscribers by posting audio recordings (or video recordings) of his appeals;
Tlog - uses any type of content, but different types of it are not combined in one entry.

If an online magazine is maintained by one person, such a blog is individual, if co-authored by a group of people, it is collective.

How to run and promote your blog

Having figured out what a blog is, let's move on to the question of how to create one. Anyone can become an author and creator using the available and simple programs located in open access. There are free platforms to create an online diary (Blogger), but to create an offline blog you need to use paid hosting(Wix for example). Each program has detailed instructions, so there is no problem.

Site maintenance

The main thing in maintaining and promoting your online magazine is high-quality content and the regularity of publications. Blogging means posting relevant and interesting information to subscribers, entertaining them and providing useful and unique material.

It is also important Feedback with readers, timely responses to comments and questions. Even a small audience can provide good resource traffic if subscribers are interested. And this, in turn, will allow you to effectively promote the blog and further extract maximum profit from it.

Website promotion

A free promotion method is to attract subscribers to your site through active communication with them on various forums and social networks. Before looking for your readers, you need to understand who is interested in the content. And then find out where you can find such a person.

Then you need to create the effect of active presence - leave comments on the right forums, ask questions and give answers, communicate correctly and be interesting. This will ensure the influx of the first readers.

Paid promotion is reduced to advertising with a link to a website and the effectiveness in this case depends on correct settings and advertising budget.
Ways to make money blogging

There are many options for making a profit, we will analyze the simplest and most effective ones.

Contextual advertising.
Teaser advertisement.
Partnership programs.
Recurring income.
Services.
virtual products.
Selling a blog.

How to register a blog

Registering a blog on various resources allows you to attract third-party subscribers through a search. It is possible to register on one or more platforms, while the choice of platform depends on the content of the blog.
How to make a quality blog

The main indicator of quality for any online diary is relevant, useful, interesting and unique content. It must meet all quality criteria. Otherwise, no one will be interested in blogging.

When choosing a specific topic, you need to stick to it, but at the same time you can write on related topics, for example, a cooking blog allows articles on festive table setting or interesting facts from history.

Quality content, up-to-date information and a constant sense of presence will make the blog interesting for readers. And this, in turn, will allow you to effectively promote it and receive good dividends.

Today, we will return a little to the basics of blogging, namely, we will talk about what a blog is. So, let's begin!

Do you want to express your thoughts in an electronic diary every day and at the same time see the opinion of people who keep similar diaries? Create a blog! you will not only learn how to express your thoughts beautifully, but you will also find many like-minded people and even friends. But they use the blog for different purposes, someone just wants to post the latest news and attach relevant links to them. But it is better to share your thoughts and attract the opinions of others, however, many do not know why this is necessary, and consider such an activity pointless.

First you need to note that only you choose appearance blog, as well as its content, all this is independent of anyone else. This is a simple version of your own site, where you can regularly update in the form of unique materials. Your visitors will immediately see new posts as they are published at the top of the page. Then the most interesting thing happens: visitors comment on your posts, someone agrees with the thoughts of the author, and someone disagrees, a discussion and exchange of thoughts begins, which brings even more people to the blog.

Article content:

What are the types of blogs or what is it for?

There are basically several types of blogs which we will list below.

Personal;
Professional;
Supportive image;
News.

As the name implies, each blog is designed for a specific purpose.

Personal blog

About the same as a personal diary for your thoughts. In it you describe the most bright days from your life, supporting it all with images or videos. The attention of users can be attracted by different headlines, for example: “Which pizza dough is best? Italian or American? or "How long has your laptop lasted?" Often, such blogs are intended only for friends or for themselves, and therefore their attendance is very low. Of course, if a person is very famous, for example, he is a politician, actor or sportsman, then thousands or even millions of people will go there every day to look at the changes in the life of their idol. If you want to see such diaries in the search engine, you can enter the query: star blogs. As a rule, these are free blogs that are posted on LiveJournal, in other words, LJ.

Professional Blog

If you are a professional in anything, you can start a thematic blog. If you are into an extreme sport, like snowboarding, you can share new achievements with people, talk about trick techniques and much more. You can tell about the equipment, which boards are better, find out who has which board. But even a professional lawyer or surgeon can start such a blog, another question is whether he wants to share his experience for free and whether it is beneficial for him.

The attendance of such diaries is quite high, mostly people from the same professional field come to them. They study all the author's notes, write comments, criticize something, and thanks to this they involve the author in the conversation. But if personal diaries are needed only to express thoughts, then professional ones start for profit. Of course, to make money, you need at least a little understanding of contextual advertising from Yandex Direct or Google Adsense. You can make money on affiliate programs, for example, if you are snowboarding, you can negotiate with an online store selling equipment for amateurs and professionals, and have a percentage of each sale when you click through the link.

In the future, people begin to earn good amounts on blogs, completely abandoning the usual work in the office. There are a lot of such people in the USA and Europe, but in our country it only flourishes and becomes very popular. Although there are a lot of low quality blogs, any non-professional tries to share his knowledge and at the same time writes in an incomprehensible and terrible language, of course, such blogs do not bring profit. If you are really into something - create a blog, share knowledge, promote it, maybe you will earn good money from it.

Blog for image

Such blogs are needed only in order to enhance the image of a certain person or company. The main purpose of the blog is to attract business partners, customers and so on. Depending on the segment in which the company operates, you need to take into account some of the nuances when creating such a blog. All the author's articles are devoted to a particular problem, of course, then the author tells how he solved this problem in a matter of seconds. But the information should be really useful, after all, the blog was created to maintain the image, and if it contains false or useless information, there can be no question of any image. Gradually, regular readers will begin to use the services of the author and recommend him to their friends. Many self-employed people create such blogs, such as dentists and lawyers who decide to leave their traditional jobs and create own business to increase profits.

News blog

Such a blog can be run by only one person, but more often it is a group of people who have common interests. They can write about politics or about resorts, in simple terms - about anything, as long as it is interesting for visitors. Perhaps the news on the blog will appear faster than on other resources, so the number of visitors will increase dramatically. In the future, when there will be a lot of readers, you can agree on affiliate programs or contextual advertising. You can earn a lot, but the income directly depends on the number of visitors.

What is microblogging

The main feature of these blogs is that visitors can write a lot of posts, but thoughts have to be expressed briefly, because a limit of 150 characters is set. Visitors can reply to each of the messages left, but you yourself determine who can leave comments. In some ways, it resembles a chat, only microblogging is much more comfortable. It is also very pleasing that you can leave comments via SMS, browser, email and so on, thanks to which you can connect more people to communication.

But why do people still create microblogs? Their main goal is to inform people, but not to lay out detailed reports or news. You can give an example with the work of builders, for example, a worker is doing something on the 5th floor, and the foreman is downstairs and does not see what he is doing, then the following dialogue occurs:

Sergey, what are you doing there?!
I'm laying tiles!
Do you need help?!
No, for the time being I'm doing it myself, if anything - I'll shout!

At the same time, information was exchanged and everyone understood what was happening. There were no particular specifics and explanations, the worker did not go into details and said that he poured the solution into a bucket of such and such material, ran for tools, and so on. Although it was possible to stretch the story and tell everything in great detail, and then also discuss it for several hours. Of course, it can be said jokingly that builders could communicate via microblogging with tablet computer, but it would take the same amount of time.

What is the purpose of microblogging? There are several main ways:

Maintain contact with acquaintances and friends, briefly discuss something, and so on;
Use as a chat in which links to site or blog news will be published with brief description materials;
Briefly post information about something, for example, popular personalities post short messages daily and talk about their lives;
Create for site visitors to quickly exchange their thoughts and keep in touch.

The best microblog at the moment is Twitter. It was created in 2006, after which it gained high popularity and had a stable attendance of a million people around the beginning of 2008. It further attracted the attention of an audience from Russia, so in 2009 it had about 76,000 Russians registered. Thanks to Twitter, a lot of plagiarism appeared, to put it simply - the sites had a similar interface, but were inferior to it in popularity. That is why no one could compete with him. If you still want to inform site or blog visitors through a separate microblog, prefer Twitter, as it is the most visited and popular at the moment.

How to create a blog?

Everything is much simpler than it seems at first glance. You can choose a ready-made service, where there are many templates to choose from. Further, you must constantly post news to the blog so that the administration does not consider it to be unvisited. Finding a service is easy, you can type in the search engine the phrase "LJ" or "LiveJournal".

You can create a blog through the WordPress content management system, it is very convenient for keeping your diary. Next, you will need hosting, hosting in our country is very cheap. Of course, hosting should work fine with PHP and databases MySQL data. Choosing a design for a blog is quite simple, since WordPress is an intuitive CMS. If you still do not want to spend money on paid hosting - order a free one. But in this case, you may experience discomfort due to ads, as a rule, ad units can be very large and distract users. Specify this nuance in advance, besides, hosters may not be very conscientious and put ads on a XXX site or something similar, this will not make the best impression on people. Of course, it is much more difficult to promote such a blog, since search robots do not take sites on free hosting seriously.

We have already written in more detail about how to create a blog, so I advise you to go to this article.

I remember the times when I didn't even know why you need a blog. It is clear that then I did not know either. Now the time has come, and I will try to popularly explain what it is and what it is intended for.

Blog- this is the same site, only a special version of it. Sites are different: news, forums, online stores. There is also a type of site called a blog.

Why do you need a blog? Why do people get them?

In order to answer this question, you need to know that blogs are divided into 5 types. And depending on the type of blog, you can find out the purpose of its creation.

Blog Types:

1. Personal blog

2. Professional Blog

3. Brand blog

4. News blog

5. Non-traditional blogs

Now let's take a closer look at each type of blog.

Personal blog

You may have heard that there are Internet diaries. This is the same as a regular paper diary in which we write whatever we want. Only it will be in electronic form. IN personal blogs write everything that is connected with the life of its author. There you will find notes ala “how I went to the cinema yesterday”, or “how I chose jeans”, etc.

As a rule, such diaries do not pursue a special purpose. It is simply important for the author to pour out his soul. Well, chat with friends. Therefore, a couple of the author's friends will read such blogs, and so, random people. True, one should not think that if a blog is personal, then it will not be interesting at all to absolutely random people. No. The author can write things that will be of interest not only to him, but also to many other people.

Professional Blog

As a rule, such blogs always gather a large audience around them, who are interested in what the author writes about. They read it, comment on it, discuss various issues, and so on.

Of course, at first the author of such a blog does not receive income, but over time, when the blog gains momentum, it will begin to bring profit to its owner. Moreover, tangible profits. The author earns money on advertising, or by placing contextual advertising blocks Yandex.Direct or.

Of course, you can earn in other ways. For example, you can sell your information materials. The same photographer can sell photos through their blog. So it turns out that initially the author simply shared his experience with his readers, talked on the blog, but over time, the blog begins to bring him serious profit. Moreover, initially the blog becomes only an additional line in the author's income, but gradually it turns into the main source of income. Today there are plenty of such bloggers in the West. But gradually we have more and more of these guys.

And here is an example of a professional photographer blog -
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/

This blog belongs to the world famous Australian Darren Rose. This is an example of a person living solely off the profits they make from their blogs. Pay attention to the upper right corner of his blog. It will say: "Join ****** Subscribers". Instead of asterisks there will be a number. It means that so many people read Darren Rose's blog. For example, today this figure is 564409 people. This suggests that the blog is very popular.

Brand blog

Blogs of this type are usually created to promote the brand of a person or company. I know many people who use these types of blogs in their work. These people already have their own sites that bring profit. And when they are asked why they need a blog, they answer that in order to share more personal information with readers.

Here another question arises: so you can share this information on your sites. Why not do just that?

The answer is quite simple. The entries on the site are very different from the entries you see on blogs. For example, if the site will contain information about the promotion of sites in search engines, then the blog will have more personal information regarding the promotion. The sites will contain materials on the technical nuances of promotion, the cost of this service, etc. And the blog will write about what problems arise when promoting sites, or about the nuances of communicating with customers, etc. That is, the difference, I think, is clear.

Blogs of this type are well suited for promoting the name of the author. The author, for example, is engaged in the promotion of sites to order, and due to the blog, many people begin to learn about him, of which some will gradually “mature” and also become a client of the author of the blog.

There is another option for using a blog brand. This is an opportunity to use it as the main site. Here is an example - http://www.michelfortin.com. This is the blog of a well-known copywriter in the west. His name is Michel Fortin