Man's new best friend - The Blog

From acting to zoo-keeping, Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, bloggers have left no stone unturned or website un-browsed. So what is this phenomenon that has everyone from budding young writers to experienced journalists, cleaners to company presidents, so excited?

How many times have you found a funny or interesting web page and emailed the link to your mates in order to share? Blogging has exploded as the method of collecting information, thoughts and ideas, and making them available online for others to read and comment on.

In 1999, the term blog was coined from the phrase 'web log', which literally refers to an online record of events or thread of comment. Weblogging started when internet savvy surfers wanted to voice their opinion on something they had seen elsewhere on the net.

Blogs enable and encourage the 'super sharing' of fact, fiction or personal opinion across the internet around the world. The blogosphere (the term used to describe the world of blogs) is growing at light speed with a new weblog created every second and already 75.2 million blogs are indexed by monitoring site Technorati, compared with 35 million less than a year ago.

Top Tips

Start blogging

You can start blogging right now by selecting one of the many services already existing on the internet, some of which are free and others charge a nominal fee. Before you sign-up though, answer this: "What do you want your blog to be about and who is likely to read it?" A good idea is to have a look at other blogs, take note of how they are structured, the authors' writing style and the overall design. What did you like and what could you improve? Then use that information to create your own "super-blog".

Once you are ready to start writing your first entry, always keep in mind your audience - are you happy just using a blog as a diary for personal thoughts, or do you want others to find it interesting enough to keep coming back? Will visitors want to read about what you had for lunch yesterday?

You may find that your initial attempts do not come naturally, so it is important to remain patient and stick with it. The more you write the better you'll become - it is unlikely it will happen without working at your writing style and putting in time and effort. If you want as many people to read your blog as possible, then aim to get it listed on specialist blog directories, or search engines such as blogwise.com or blogorama.com, which will help to increase your blog's exposure.

Better blogging

For those who are already blogging, here are few tips on how you could improve:

• Maintain consistency
• Keep information to the point
• Write regularly to ensure visitors come back
• Create a schedule to ensure you have time to write regular updates
• Do not enter personal or confidential information about an individual or organisation
• Check your spelling and grammar
• Enjoy it!

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