Sarah Dobbs checks out the state of the
personal blog. Could it be finally dying out?
What do you think of when you hear the word
'blog'? Or 'blogger'? Chances are, you imagine a person, maybe a young woman,
writing about their thoughts and experiences. You might think of someone like
Heather Armstrong (aka 'Dooce') or maybe someone like Tucker Max. People who
write about themselves online, basically, and build a readership of people who
are interested in their lives and personalities.
However, Technorati's list of the current
most popular blogs presents a different picture of blogging. The top ten
'blogs', according to Technorati, are The Huffington Post, Mashable. BuzzFeed,
TechCrunch, The Verge, Gizmodo, The Daily Beast, Think Progress, Ars Technica,
and The Next Web. None of those are personal blogs: they're news sites, run by
editors with a selection of writers, publishing stories and opinions based on
events and products.
So where are the personal bloggers? It
feels like it's been a long time since we last heard about any online diarist
bagging themselves a book deal, or even, really, attracting much media
attention. What makes the headlines instead is social media - people getting
arrested for opinions they've expressed on Twitter, for instance. Could
personal blogging finally be dying out? And if so, why? What changed over the
last few years?
The Rise Of Social Media
The obvious answer, of course, is that
Facebook and Twitter became wildly popular. Using these new channels alongside
writing a blog seemed to make sense, at first: you could link to your new
posts, you could chat with your audience, and maybe attract new readers too.
But it seems many bloggers have discovered
that it's much easier to bash out a tweet instead of writing a full blog post
about whatever they're thinking about - and it's more rewarding too. Twitter
provides instant feedback, and tweets can be passed around very quickly via
retweets. Rather than needing to think about a full response to any particular
thing, it's easy to just type out a thought in under 140 characters, and have a
discussion about it.
Blogger and lifecaster Chris Pirillo summed
it up when he said that "Twitter is a great place to tell the world what
you're thinking before you've had a chance to think about it"; tweeting
saves time and energy and still lets you make your opinions heard.
And platforms like Facebook and Twitter
tend to attract more comments, and more engagement from readers, than blog
posts. Those platforms are designed to encourage conversation, after all;
commenting on a blog post doesn't necessarily feel like talking directly to the
author, and you're less likely to get a response there (and if you do, you'll
probably have to remember to check back to see it, rather than getting a
notification or clicking through to see your mentions). Getting comments on a
blog post can feel like validation, though, and without that it's more
difficult to feel motivated to post.
How To Start Your Own Blog
Fancy starting your own blog? Go for it,
but make sure you know what you want to get out of it. If you're expecting to
make a living by writing a blog, you're likely to be disappointed.
But if you just like writing, or want to
share some specialist knowledge or experiences with the world, here's how to
go about it:
- Think up an imaginative name for your
blog - ideally, something that tells the reader what to expect.
- Sign up for an account at a blogging
site: WordPress (wordpress.com) is a good bet, or you could use Blogger
(blogger.com).
- Start writing! Make sure you proofread
your entries, and give them informative, eye-catching titles wherever
possible
- Get involved in the community. Comment
on other blogs, engage with other people writing about the same subject
as you, and maybe see if you can write a guest post for another blog -
it's a good way to attract new readers.
- Write regularly, so your audience knows
what to expect and will keep coming back.
- Be careful to stay within the law -
don't make accusations you can't back up, and don't steal other people's
content, including photographs.
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