Blogging, what is it? You've heard talk about blogging but are one of those people who don't quite understand what it is. That's alright, as we'll go over what a blog is, the history of blogs, what they are used for and why they are important to your online business.

What is a blog

A blog is essentially like a journal where people can post their thoughts and have them read and commented on by anyone.

What is a blogger

A blogger is someone who creates a blog and posts on it.

Brief history of blogs

Weblogs, simply known as blogs now, haven't been around for that long. The roots of the blog can be traced back to 1994 when people kept online journals (diaries) in which they wrote about things in their life.

Our current blog has been around for an even shorter period of time. In 1998, Open Diary created a site in which its users could post blogs that had the ability to be commented on by other people.

The popular free blogging site called Blogger was created in 1999 by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. Blogger was later purchased by Google in 2003.

Despite the fact that blog sites have been in existence since 1998, they have only been popular for 5 or 6 years. In 2001, how-to-blog manuals were published and the phenomenon has only taken off since that point.

What are blogs used for?

In the very beginning, blogs were usually used to talk about a person's life. People would make blog posts about things happening in their life, thus using the blog as a public journal.

Over time, the use of the blog evolved. People began using the blog to post their opinions about everything from politics to religion to sports to music, among other things.

Nowadays, blogs are even used to make money. One 20-year-old makes $5,000 from Google per month because he has Google Ads on his blog. Businesses have also begun to effectively use blogs for their own purposes.

Why are blogs important to your online business?

Millions of people from all over the world read blogs every day. Those who have a blog are given a lot of exposure.There is the potential for them to have millions of unique readers each day.

Can you imagine having a million people see your business name each day? That sounds pretty incredible, doesn't it? Yet, that's exactly what could happen if you create and maintain a successful, well-read blog. And that's actually a pretty easy thing to do.

So how exactly can you use the blog to help your online business? Well, you can use it in a variety of ways.

You could:

Use the blog to discuss things related to your field of business. For instance, if your business provides web hosting services, you could discuss things related to web hosting, thus showing potential customers how much of a guru you are. Let your employees have their own blogs to talk about your services/products. The more active blogs that reference your business, the more exposure you'll get. Use your business blog to keep current customers updated on new services/products available. Post news about your business, as well as start rumors about potential happenings in your online business. Get feedback from current and potential customers on your products/services. For instance, you could make a post on a new product, giving details about it. Then your existing customers or potential customers could give their opinion on it. Promote your online business on your blog by making blog posts with information on what your business offers. Install Adsense on your blog and make extra revenue from ads clicked, thereby helping your business to be more profitable.

There are really a lot of possibilities to how you can use a blog to help your business, even more than those listed here. Blogs that are hosted on your site (by using a program like WordPress) can help your site achieve a higher ranking in search engines. This is because blogs are search engine friendly (Google is known to list them after only a few days, whereas it takes regular web sites weeks to appear on a search engine). Having a high search engine ranking is crucial to having a successful online business. Blogs help you to increase your ranking, which will increase your business.

The great thing about blogs is that they are easy to use and also very effective. Start a blog today and watch your business grow.