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Building blog traffic requires more than writing a few postings. In the arena of content marketing, effective blogging entails becoming a respected online community member who leaves a distinctive, value-added imprint. Blogging has become the "publishing platform du jour;" a low-cost, potentially high-impact and visible way not only to construct an informational platform but also 1) to become a valuable member of a virtual community, and 2) to elevate the profile of one's personal brand.
Blogging (also known as writing short, undiluted Web commentaries) was born in 1994. In his article "The Early Years," Thompson (n.d.) provides a historical timeline of blog inception and development.
* January 1994: The appearance ofLinks.net marks the inception of blogging.
* December 1997: The word "weblog" is derived from "logging the web."
* April 1999: Weblog is abbreviated to "blog."
* August 1999: Blogger rolls out the first popular, free blog creation service.
In their most elemental form, blogs provide a forum in which individuals express a unique voice on a given topic. Many times this occurs after doing research, considering the viewpoints of other people, and ferreting out relevant information. According to Winer (2003) a blog is "the unedited voice of a single person" and "... a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser." Blood (2000) defines a blog as "a website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page" and "an outbreak of selfexpression." A blog (unlike a Wiki, which is the edited amalgam of many viewpoints) has become a ubiquitous form of communication, an electronic watering hole where like-minded voices congregate to commiserate on topics. The creation of bite sized articles is now a popular way to disseminate ideas. WPVirtuoso (Interesting Facts, 2013) estimates that 172,800 blogs are created each day - with 400 million people viewing 14.4 billion pages per month (Neville, 2014). If there are possibly one billion blogs globally, this translates to the equivalent of one in three persons reading blogs worldwide (Haynes, n.d.).
Blogging has gained traction as a communication platform among companies as well as individuals; e.g., 157 of Fortune 500 firms (31%) display a corporate blog (Barnes and Lescault, 2014). Blogging is especially...