What is a Blog and What is it for? Types, Benefits

A blog or web blog is a website where content from different categories is shared within the blog.

It can have one author or different authors and all published articles (posts or posts) are ordered chronologically and the most recent publication is always presented first.

Blogs have become the digital home of many professionals, lovers of writing, and specialists; being the digital channel where he would share his opinions, experiences, and of course his thoughts.

The professionals who are dedicated to maintaining these spaces are known as bloggers.

Blog definition

Also called a web blog, it is a site that is periodically updated and is written by a single author or a small group of authors.

We can mention platforms that provide spaces for blog posts, for free, such as Twitter Blog, WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Medium, Tumblr, among others.

Blog history

The term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997. The short form, blog, was created by Peter Merholz.

Before blogs became popular, there was the Bulletin Board System (BBS), in Spanish Bulletin Board System. The BBS is the forerunner of modern forums and blogs. The first BBS was created by Ward Christensen in 1978.

Since June 14, 1993, Mosaic Communications Corporation maintains its What’s New, which shows the list of web pages. On August 23, 1999, the Blogger platform was launched, created by Pyra Labs.

Since 2008, blogging has become a trend. Every second, every minute, every hour, and every day more and more blogs appear.

Since the appearance of the first blog creation platforms. Every day more and more sophisticated platforms appear that are easy to use, learn and understand.

Importance of having a blog

Today the algorithms of each of the world’s search engines have become more rigorous and demanding when it comes to positioning a web page.

For this reason, thousands of brands have decided to incorporate blogs into their web portals to help improve the positioning within the search engine results page (SERP – Search Engine Results Pages).

By creating original, innovative, frequent, and constant content aimed at the target audience, where you can attract a large audience and improve interaction with the brand.

Currently, Internet users have become much more dependent on search engines. Who does not investigate or consult search engines when purchasing a product or service? Therefore, if a brand is not positioned in the first places of search engines, users will never be able to find it.

In order to evaluate the impact of the use of blogs within the communication and positioning strategy, it is necessary to constantly monitor the indicators, metrics, or KPIs.

Why does a brand need to create original content on its blog?

At present, many brands have decided to apply Content Marketing through the blog and the main reason is that, if the brand publishes content frequently, it increases the possibility of positioning itself among search engines, since the indexing spiders of each search engine may track and increase the presence of the website.

Another reason to have a blog is that it allows you to share valuable content with potential customers.

Currently selling a product or service directly is not feasible without first promoting, marketing and selling said product indirectly through content and knowledge writing. This increases the trust and credibility of users towards the brand.

Types of blogs

Depending on the use that you want to give it, there are different options and uses that the blog can be given.

Personal blog

It is a diary where the person shares their reflections, thoughts, and experiences.

Micro-blogging

They are small fragments or extracts of digital content (they can be text, images, links, short videos, infographics, among others). The social network Twitter belongs to this type of blog. It helps a lot to create direct content and it can go viral.

Professional blog

It is a space where it allows the author to develop various topics that are related to each other and to the profession, which allows readers to obtain developed content with great precision.

Niche blog

It is a site that focuses mainly on a specialized sector or niche, an example of this are educational blogs, which allow teachers who are part of the house of studies, to express their point of view and communicate content to the educational community and students, helping to promote active, critical and interactive learning.

Brand blog

It is a blog that focuses mainly on generating content related to the brand, building a community, and reinforcing branding.

Corporate and organizational blogs

A corporate blog is always based on a content marketing strategy. The objective is to attract organic traffic to the company’s website and get customers interested in the products or services they offer.

Basic elements to create a blog

For the construction of a blog, it is necessary to use basic resources such as the domain, which is the unique name that the web page will have and at the end of each name, it can end in .com, .co, .org, .net,… it is also necessary hosting or server where all audiovisual and informative resources will be stored and housed. To develop the blog there are 2 ways: manual programming (or on foot) where you hire programmers or web developers for its elaboration and the second option is through a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress.

Apart from these elements, it is necessary to have a content plan, where the frequency of publication and the CONTENT must be established, which is the fuel that gives life to this great tool.

Benefits of a blog within the Digital Marketing strategy

Helps boost brands

A blog is an excellent communication channel that favors the growth and positioning of any brand. The publication of high-value content helps attract more users from different parts of the world, increase interaction with the target audience and create a link that allows to strengthens the trust obtained.

Get more customers

If the user achieves the expected result with the little tips that are offered in blog posts, what would happen if he or she acquires the brand’s service or product? The person who follows and sees the publications day by day will think the same, which will help increase the probability that they will hire those services or buy those products.

Presenting products in the digital world

Having a blog is like a digital catalog since it allows displaying product information without invading the customer’s space. Some types of information that can be published are the following:

• What is it?
• How does it work?
• Profits
• Testimonials from other consumers

Help create your own community

By creating and sharing valuable content frequently, readers will gradually subscribe to the brand’s blog, as they will probably get used to reading the published content. Remember that knowledge gives power and the blog is a window that influences the community, which will help to publicize and increase trust in the brand.

Improve positioning and increase visitor traffic

By creating valuable content and publishing it frequently, you will increase your search engine rankings and therefore relevance. Of course, the traffic to the web will also increase. Thanks to this, the opportunity for more users to visit and review the product catalog, read the testimonials, among many other options, will be expanded.

Position yourself as a benchmark in the market

Starting from the previous point, by increasing the position within the search engine, the brand becomes a benchmark in the sector to which it belongs. Of course, to achieve this it is necessary to share specific and valuable content.

Increase the list of subscribers

Through the blog, and by adding subscription forms, a database of contacts who are really interested in the brand will be built and thus a more direct approach with users will be created. Remember, email is the most valuable information today.

Create strategic alliances with other brands or bloggers

Always, since time immemorial, having allies helps to strengthen, expand and grow faster to the brand. Some alliances that can be beneficial for both parties are:

• Create a special edition of a product or service together.
• Exchange subscriber lists.
• Recommend the other brand’s product or service.
• Write on each brand’s blog.
• Share content on social networks.
• Affiliate Marketing.
• Contests with different brands.

Difference between a blog and a web page

The biggest doubt that arises when creating a digital space is the difference between the blog and the website, since both tools use the same basic elements for their development, their difference lies in the following points:

• The current style of the web page is to have a welcome or home area, where the objective is to show a summary of everything that can be located, currently, many people use the one-page option, it also contains some internal pages such as about us or me, contact, … But a blog has a complete visual of all the entries and publications that have been made.
• A web page is normally a static option, in short, the information that is published is not constantly changed, unlike the blog, which is a dynamic option, since, depending on the schedule created, it can be published daily or daily interspersed.

According to the last raised,

How can you position a static web page?

To give more mobility to the web page, it is merged with the blog option, to publish posts constantly and thus focus all the effort of the content created according to the keyword you want to position, focus on the algorithm of each search engine (Google, Yahoo !, Bing,…)

Recommendations for maintaining a corporate blog

When writing content for a brand, some recommendations must be taken into account:

Write the information or content in the area.

This will help focus all the content and articles written to contribute to the positioning of the defined keywords within the marketing plan strategy. Brands must maintain focus and write content in the area in which they specialize, this will avoid confusion in the information on those topics that the brand does not handle.

You have to analyze the target audience.

To create content that is capable of attracting users, it is necessary to investigate what are the topics that these users like to share and with which the target audience interacts the most. You also have to evaluate the format of the content, for example, if it is accompanied by a video, slides, images, infographics, etc.

You have to be consistent.

The main key of a corporate blog is consistency, this does not mean that you should publish content daily; however, it also does not mean that you should stop posting content for a long period. What this means is that the brand must define and create a publishing plan. Depending on the goal, the number of posts and the time interval may vary. If the brand is having difficulty creating content, you can create alliances with other freelance bloggers to collaborate with the brand blog.

Place subscription forms.

This will help build a good database of potential customers who are interested in your brand’s products or services. If a good e-mail marketing strategy is applied, it can be achieved to have a great reach and thus increase the conversion.

Encourage participation and interaction.

Motivating internal customers to share articles through social media can improve engagement. Responding to all the comments that readers have made on published articles will increase engagement. This will make readers feel cared for and incentivize them to participate in future posts.

Define the communication style.

This does not mean imposing a writing style on the writers, but rather defining and determining an editorial line to which all authors can adapt their articles. In this way, there will be unified, focused, and harmonious content, which will help reinforce the personality and essence of the brand.

Create an effective content and publishing plan.

It is essential, since it must detail the topic to be published, the keyword to be positioned, the length of the article, among others. A publication and content plan helps you keep track of authors, published content, and publication frequency.

Professional blog vs. Personal blog

The professional blogs are focused on the style defined by the brand positioning strategies, frequency, and style; In short, for the administration of this space, they are based on a writing guide created by the platform.

In return, the personal blog has a publication schedule, however, they are based more on the blogger’s mood and their motivation; therefore, there is a high possibility that they share varied content, for example, you can share experiences, meals, opinions, among others.

BLOG creation platform

It is very easy to create a blog, but maintaining it is a titanic job. You need to be dedicated, curious, passionate, and patient. It requires researching, curating, reading, writing, publishing, and sharing. It is essential that all the content written is related to each other. There are different platforms to create blogs with one click.

WordPress

WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System) based on PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor and MySQL (My Structured Query Language). It was created on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. There are two types of WordPress, WordPress.com, and WordPress.org. 

WordPress.com allows you to create a blog with just one click. It has an intuitive interface and allows better management of entries and categories. The downside to this version of WordPress is that you will always have the sub-domain of SiteName.wordpress.com. It does not allow the installation of the plugin; Of course, this is the free version, the paid version of WordPress.com offers the option of having your own domain.

To use WordPress.org it is necessary to buy a domain and pay for the hosting service. You only need to install WordPress and perform the necessary configuration. The great advantage of WordPress.org is that you can install the plugins you want to use, select and customize for the template. It is important to note that the WordPress.org version allows you to develop a much more sophisticated and complete site.

Blogger

The Blogger platform was launched on August 23, 1999, by Pyra Labs as an exclusive blogging tool. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed conditions.

It is a very easy-to-use platform, just like WordPress.com. This tool possibly ranks blog posts faster. Since this tool belongs to Google, having the blog in Blogger will always have the sub-domain: NombreDelSitio.blogspot.com

Recommended templates for a complete blog

The use of a template to generate a complete and personalized design helps you save time and make changes quickly without affecting response time so much, therefore, I will show you the basic templates that are recommended are the following:

Feminine – Woman Blog Elementor WordPress Theme

All-in-One Startup WordPress Bundle

BeClinic – Multipurpose Medical WordPress Theme

conclusion

Blogs have changed their use and function, and it depends to a large extent on the objectives to be achieved through these spaces, making them the content engine that gives life to websites.

These platforms are more current than ever, so many brands invest and assign professionals dedicated to them to achieve organic positioning and be the first options within search engines.