Blogging

By Bobjohnson (1word).

Once upon a time a long, long time ago, actually less than 10 years ago, journalists had to get big fancy degrees just to be able to publish their works in a magazine or newspaper. Today however, it is much easier. With newspapers being placed on life support and many publications going online, the future of print media is uncertain. And although this may be a bad thing for the print media industry, it is a great thing for aspiring journalists. Blogs are a great tool for an ametuer journalist to build a professional portfolio. The purpose of blogs vary from personal diaries, journals, collection of links, to breaking news and political soapboxes.

Most blogs are free. To start use sites like: Livejournal, Blogger, Wordpress, and Blogspot. These site are user friendly and will have your blog up and running in about 3 minutes. Once started, you can blog about anything you like. As a blogger you can blog about anything from your pets and hobbies to politics and sports. If the blog is being used to build a proffesional portfolio you should remember to not mix business with pleasure. For example, if your blog main focus is on sports, a random blog about you pets should not be posted unless your pets play sports.

After starting your blog it is time to promote it. Social sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter are perfect for this. Some bloggers even "take it to the streets" literally by printing flyers and attaching their blogs to events. Another good way is to use your blog's address as a signature link in you emails or texts.

After doing all of the above things it is time to protect your investment. After gaining a nice readership you have to keep your content fresh. Readers have short attention spans and will quickly forget about your blog if you don't update often. Once per day is recommended but do not go longer than a week without an update. Updating your blog is very easy with the technology that is available today. If you don't own a computer, don't worry, you can update your blog from your phone (trust me, I created this entire post from my phone).
Use this information to see if blogging is for you.

There is no need to use a paid blogsite when you can do it for free. If your blog is successful and you want to turn it into a website then you can use a paid site. Until then, enjoy the free sites and remember to send me a link to your blog so I can follow you.