Early 2006 gave an amazing method of online marketing – Blogs! I will discuss why blogs have become a very popular method of web marketing today. But before moving further, the big question:

What is Blog?

A blog helps to instantly publish content online. Unlike websites, uploading content to a blog DOES NOT require a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or any other software to upload the files to a server.

If you have access to internet, you can publish content from anywhere – home, office or anywhere else.

This is how it happens – Blog software asks you to login using a username and password (just like you login to your web-based email like Gmail etc) and post content. Once you click on the “publish” or “save” button, your content gets published instantly.

Once the content gets published a unique URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is created. It is something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/blog/the-latest-post

 
You can then view the newly posted content online using a browser. Anyone in the world can also view it.

This is the primary reason why blogs became so popular. No technical knowledge required, no software hassles, just login and post content and view it online.

A great feature of blogs is that the visitors can leave a comment/feedback. This way it becomes interactive. Compare it to websites that are more-or-less online brochures of a company. You read the content and forget.

Here is some more interesting stuff. Some bloggers got such good response that they left their jobs and became full time bloggers. If you are thinking what happened to their income, then you will be surprised to know that their blogs gave them much more than what they earned from a full time job.

This was possible because their blogs got a huge amount of traffic (because of the quality and fresh content and some SEO techniques). The owner of the blogs then got some advertisers to advertise their websites on their blog. This way they generated some income. There are many other ways to generate income from a blog, but it requires a different post.

Another benefit of blog is that if someone really likes a blog, they can subscribe to the blog using a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. They can then read the newly posted content using a RSS feed reader like Google Reader.

These are some of the reasons why blogs have become very popular today. Everyone wants to own a blog.

Today many people have their own blogs. This site is my blog. And I post articles related to search engine marketing because this is something I love. You can scroll down to the end of the post to leave a comment.

Many companies have their own blogs. This helps them to get user feedback on their product and/or services.

Most online news websites have their own blogs too. Readers can leave comments after reading a news item. For example: http://chronicle.com/news/.

A blog can be created in many languages. WordPress offers over 50 languages to choose from.

Here are some great blogs I have come across:

http://www.problogger.net/blog/ – One of the world’s most popular blog for bloggers. Owned by Darren Rowse of Australia. Offers tips on how to market a blog. He also owns http://www.livingroom.org.au/photolog/ which offers digital camera reviews and rating.

http://www.shoemoney.com/ – Owned by Jeremy Schoemaker. Offers all sorts of interesting information to bloggers. Gets over 10,000 unique visitors a day.

http://labnol.blogspot.com/ – Amit Aggarwal’s blog – an Indian who left his top paying full time job as a computer science engineer to become a professional blogger. He also owns http://www.labnol.org/ a.k.a. Digital Inspiration.

Amit has appeared on TV and radio channels including BBC, CNN IBN, CNBC, NDTV, Star TV, ETV and Blog TV Singapore. He was featured on the cover page of The Week magazine. Microsoft awarded him the “Most Valuable Professional” status for 2007 and 2008. Hindustan Times (a leading daily news paper in India) mentioned him as “founder of the Indian blogging revolution.”

Amit writes about computer software, consumer gadgets, web applications and personal productivity.

It is very easy to create a blog. Infact you can create a blog for free. Read my post on how to create a blog.

Your ideas/suggestions will help me to improve this blog. Please do leave a comment.