Blogging

Diaries used to be your own private record of your thoughts and doings. A record of your life kept for your own amusement and enlightenment. Keeping a diary tends to brew thoughts of ladies in lace and lavender writing about the men who set their hearts aflutter.

Of course, there are always those who have written diaries in the form of autobiographies—politicians, sportsmen etc, and then made them public and gained a great deal of money in the process.

Believe it or not there are people who are making money out of online diaries or blogs (short for web log). Some blogs are so popular that publishers have got hold of them and printed them on old-fashioned paper and you can now buy them at your local branch of Angus and Robertson.

It must be said that some blogs are highly amusing or can give insight into the minds and lives of the writers.

Many companies now have blogs which they use to promote their products, or to write articles of interest to their clients. Indeed this blog is an example of that. Politicians, media stars and even governments use blogs as a means of informing and swaying public opinion.

A blog is basically a website used to give regular updates. It may be mainly text but can contain photos, video and music.

So how do you go about setting up a blog? Well, there are a number of sites which will host your blog such as Blogger, (which is, in fact, part of Google). It costs you nothing and is very easy to set up. All you have to do is remember to update the content from time to time. Of course, if you want to have lots of readers then you will need to publicise it by telling people about it and getting other blogs and websites to link to it. You reciprocate by putting links to other blogs and websites on your blog.

Blogs are part of the worldwide web and regularly get trawled by search engines, so you could find a blog amongst your Google search results or you could find strangers coming across your blog if you have some interesting content.

Blogging can be a lot of fun and of course, Facebook and Twitter are themselves specialist blog sites. 

Should you need help setting up a blog or joining Facebook or Twitter then we will be able to sort you out. Of course, you do need the internet, but it does not cost anything to belong to Facebook, Twitter or to run a blog.