What to Blog

You've set up your Blog and you are now faced with the question of

What to Blog???

Commentary Blogs

Blogs provide a platform for people to get their voices heard. You too can do the same. Most people start off by commenting on current affairs and government policies. This way, you can never go out of topic for your Blog.

Diary Blogs

Most people would like to document their lives online for their friends and relatives to read. By writing on interesting happenings for the day can prove to be a good read. Often such blogs would draw in more readers with the use of photographs.

Company Blogs

If you run a company Blog, you can also write on updates to your industry or company. Your target audience would most probably be your affiliates and partners, although most of the time, your rivals would also "spy" on you.

Event Blogs

For active individuals, you may want to write on events that you attended. By instilling your own opinions and feelings of the event, you can gather readers who either missed the event and those who went but want to find out more on it.

Talent Blogs

Blogs are a good avenue to showcase your talents. Be it photography, art, music, video, etc., you can use Blogs to connect to your Fans.

Instructional Blogs

Expert in a field of your own? Teach others with the use of a Blog.

Blog Shop

Have some stuff to sell? Blog shops are increasingly popular among the young.

Choosing the Right Blog Platform

There are many free Blog hosting sites that you can use to set up your blog. Let us look at what are the more popular ones and how you should decide on which blog platform to use.

Blogger by Google
www.blogger.com

This is the most popular choice among blog hosting sites. Some of the merit points:

• Drag-and-Drop feature for Beginners to play around with Blog template, without the need for prior knowledge on HTML codings
  
• Single Google account can create multiple Blogs
• Ranks higher in Google
• Is a good publisher tool for custom domain
  
• Easily embed Google Adsense into Blog
  

Some of the bad points:

• Limited Templates ready within Blogger database, therefore you will need to search for templates yourself
• Cannot add Adsense into post
  

Suitable for Bloggers who prefer convenience and who wants to earn from their Blogs.

Wordpress
wordpress.org
wordpress.com

Why use Wordpress:

• Many varieties of templates within Wordpress website itself
• More Widgets that you can add
• Templates provided look more aesthetic and neat
• Can add Adsense into posts
  

Why some people refrain from using Wordpress:

• One account can only have one Blog
• Gets Spam more easily, so there's a need to install anti-spam in your Blog
  

LiveJournal

Increasingly popular for setting up of Blog shops, perhaps due to its clear-cut presentation. Not ideal as there are advertisements by LiveJournal on it. Also, one account can only create one Blog.

Blogs hosted by Social Networking Sites

These would include Blogs hosted by Friendster, Multiply, etc. Not ideal as there are advertisements by the sites on it as well. It's fine to be use such Blogs as your online diary but it would not be useful if you would like to professionalise your Blog.

Introduction

Before blogs are called blogs, they are known as web logs.

With increasing ease of access to the Internet and the prevalence of popular youth culture, blogging has been an activity that is gaining increasingly more enthusiasts.

If you're new to blogging, this blog will serve as a guide for you to embark on this addictive trail.

If you're already blogging, this blog will serve to provide some tips and techniques in promoting and marketing your blog so that you can maximise the potential of your blog.