Check out the rest of this mini-series if you’ve missed the previous sessions!
Part One: Introduction to Journaling
Blogging
Blogging has really taken off in the past five years or so. Most people write (or have written) their own blog, know someone who writes a blog, or reads blogs themselves. The word “blog” is short for “web log,” which is essentially an online diary.
Most blogs are open to the public so that anyone can read them, although blogs can be formatted so that only the writer can view them, or so that only “invited” readers can view them. This helps to protect the privacy of the writer if they want the ease of typing a diary on a computer without the hassle of the entire world seeing what they have to say, or if they want to share their day-to-day life with close friends and family whom they don’t see on a regular basis.
Getting started with blogging
Your options are endless when it comes to blogging. It can be done for free on platforms such as Blogger or WordPress, or you can pay a monthly fee (usually it’s between $5 and $10) to be able to have more control of the look and feel of your blog.
As to what you can write about, your options are endless there, too. As an active participant in the health blogging community, I visit a lot of blogs covering a whole range of health topics: weight loss, disorders, nutrition, fitness, general health, women’s health, body image, recipes, particular diets, and many more. And that is all under the blanket term “health.” You can imagine how many other topics and kinds of blogs that can be found under the headings “politics,” “literature,” and “pop culture,” for example.
Probably one of the most well-known blogs is Perez Hilton’s celebrity gossip blog, in which pictures are plastered on each blog post, paparazzi-style. But blogs are cropping up everywhere: most newspaper columnists also write blogs as part of their contract with the newspaper they work for, and many websites for all kinds of corporations and organizations have a blog affiliated with them.
The advantage with blogging
The reason that blogs are on all of these kinds of websites and associated with newspapers is because blogging has an advantage over most other kinds of media, such as regular websites or television, radio, and newspaper: blogging acts as a forum for discussion. Unless the writer makes the decision to “close comments,” which means that no one can voice their opinion on the blog post, anyone is able to leave a comment at the end of a blog post, offering their own thoughts on the blog post. This provides more contact and interaction between writer and reader, and allows the writer to understand what the reader wants. There is more direct communication happening with a blog.
Print media is also falling by the wayside as we become more obsessed with the Internet and other forms of technology. When we have such easy access to the world at just a click of the mouse, buying a newspaper seems redundant. This, too, has caused an explosion of blogging. It is especially useful for journalists who want to be the first reporter to share the latest news with the world. When Bill Clinton was discovered to having an affair, the news was leaked on a blog before any other form of media got to it. Blogging is a powerful tool.
There are drawbacks to blogging, of course, as well. Because it is so easy and anyone can do it, there can be a lot of nonsensical garbage out there. It can also be problematic if people write a blog and hit “publish” without thinking twice about their work; if they write something controversial, it can have a very negative impact on their reputation. Furthermore, even if a published post is deleted, there are always ways to find deleted information on the Internet, so it pays to be careful about what exactly we write.
The style of writing within blogging changes dramatically depending on what kind of blogging you are doing. If it’s a personal blog, it will likely have a more conversational tone, whereas a politician’s blog will likely be more professionally written with more distance between writer and reader.
Although some bloggers may write sporadically, if you want more readers to stick around on your blog, it helps to write on a regular basis (for example, Living Rhetorically in the Real World is updated every Tuesday and Thursday; Living Healthy in the Real World is updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday).
As previously mentioned, blogging is a very powerful tool: the world is at your fingertips when you engage with this form of journaling.
[…] This post was Twitted by Saganlives […]
[…] Original post by Living Rhetorically in the Real World […]
[…] Part Five: Blogging […]