corporate blog |
BENEFITS OF HAVING A BLOG |
Here is the crucial power of blogs: They make it easy to frequently add content to a Web site. Blog programs and ready-to-use blogging services cut out the laborious and technical traditional process of building a Web site and adding pages to it. Consider what a site owner needed to do before blogs were available:
1.To create a single Web page, a site owner had to gain some familiarity with HTML (hypertext markup language, the underlying code of all Web sites). The choice was to write out the code by hand (fairly difficult) or use software that made page-creation a little more intuitive. Design skills were needed and the software could be expensive. Ready-made templates eased the pain somewhat, but building a single page the old way was never as easy as blogging.
2.After creating a single-page, old-style site, the owner had to get it up on the Web. Usually, this meant using an internet system called FTP (file transfer protocol), which is somewhat like the My Computer program in Windows but operates across the space between two computers. Using FTP, the owner could upload newly created or altered pages to his or her site, which resided on an Internet computer. After the transfer, the new page became “live” and could be viewed by visitors to the site.
Creating a nonblog Web site is hard, and the difficulties discourage frequent updates. Blogging is easy, and blogging software encourages frequent site updates. Creating a blog page doesn’t need to be any harder than writing and sending an e-mail or posting a message to an online discussion forum.
As easily as sending an e-mail, bloggers add content to their sites. More than that, the new content is neatly organized withinthe Web site, and it contains all the design elements and navigational features that occur throughout the site. In most cases, the user didn’t have to lift a finger to create those design features. Beautiful, informative, fun, up-to-date, personal Web sites are created with no more technical know-how than is required to chat with the grandkids in e-mail.
Blogging software encourages frequent updating of the Web site. And frequent, easy updates result in the following typical blog characteristics: Fresh content on the site: Many bloggers update their content every day or several times during the day. Even weekly updates result in a fresher Web site than most nonblog personal sites. Personal content: When given the opportunity to self-publish on a daily basis, most people reach into their own lives for content. Many blogs are like personal, public diaries. Newsy content: Other bloggers take a less personal approach, keying their updated content to news items or pages on other sites. These blogs can still have a personal slant, especially if the blogger offers comments on the news or outside pages. These commentary blogs typically use lots of links to those other pages so visitors can see the source material as well as the commentary.