What is a blog? What can you do with a blog and how do you get started?

A blog, in the shortest possible answer, is any thoughts that you want it to be. It could be you talking about what you have done that day to a technical blog detailing latest releases and news from your organisation. In all probability, it is somewhere in the middle.

A blog is what you want it to be. If you just want to get into writing down your thoughts each dayand sharing them with the world then there is no harm in doing that. If you are training for a mass participation event and raising money for charity, such as the London Marathon or the New York Marathon, you might find that documenting your training and fund raising inspires you to keep up with both, whilst giving sponsors a point of contact.

For someone wanting to raise a bit of extra pocket money, a blog can be anything from a general chit chat to an ongoing discussion about a particular topic that the writer is a specialist on. Mommy blogging, where the writer talks about what she is doing and topics that are affecting her can generate good followings and, therefore, significant payments from sponsors. Whilst if you are qualified in a certain field then blogging about that field could generate highly specific traffic, which would generate less specific adverts, but highly profitable at that.

A blog can be anything from an online diary to a help desk to support a huge organisation, as long as you can get it onto a website. It is anything that you wish to use it for – the sky is your limit.

But, how do you get started? Well, there are plenty of popular blogging tools available, depending on how complicated you want to get. You can use simple tools such as Blogger or WordPress.com to get online and blogging instantly, using their free services, or you can buy your own domain name, download the latest version from WordPress.org and arrange some hosting and have a very powerful tool.

You can also have your blog look just as you want it to look. There are plenty of off the shelf designs, or themes, to use on your website, depending on what you are using. And there are also loads of plugins that you can use to give it all of the extra functions you might want. From easy to bookmark with Facebook to showing your Twitter status on the site to surveys and contact forms.

The world really is your oyster when it comes to blogging. You have it your way, talking about whatever you want to talk about and doing whatever you want with it. At best, your readers will also interact with you and leave comments, then you can also reply to. It makes it excellent fun, potentially very rewarding and something that everything should be joining in with.

So, that is what a blog is – whatever you want it to be!

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