Aussie Bloggers

It is great to see the amount of brand new bloggers joining in the Aussie Bloggers Forum community, as well as some who have not yet started but want to learn more before they take the plunge. I have recently read articles which foresee the demise of blogging, its popularity being overtaken by the newer social media applications and microblogging but I do wonder if this will be the case.

As I see more and more people starting to use the internet for public communication; stepping outside of their existing circle of friends, family and contacts to discover new people, interests and opportunities, I can also see more of them taking up blogging. These newer applications are very likely stepping stones on the way to them owing their very own communication portal, a blog. The social media sites will continue performing the same function for bloggers as they do today. They provide additional methods of communication with your current readers, ways of cementing contacts and developing friendships and opportunities to raise your profile and get your blog better known.

Unless, in the unlikely event, that one social media application attracts the majority of internet users and adds enough features to allow us to create our own individual and distinct homes on the web then the blog will survive. As more interactive features become available for social networking sites, more functions and flexibility will also be added to blogging software.

I can think of many ways in which running your own blog, be it personal or business, has the advantage over other types of application to create your own home on the web.

• If you host on your own domain or use an online blogging platform that allows customization and addins (e.g. Blogger blogspot) you have control over your design to make your blogging web portal look distinctly yours.
• With a platform such as Wordpress and the newer Majestic, you can create virtually any kind of site. The actual blog can be peripheral to the rest of the site and different pages can perform different functions. Blog software can be used for such diverse areas as podcasting, photo galleries, community sites or online sales.
• You are free to add the features you want, not those dictated by external media applications.
• Widgets and plugins already allow us to integrate much of our other internet activity into our blogs and these are becoming more advanced and flexible. A blog can even be used as your own personal aggregator, bringing in your feeds and your messages from other sites.
• Direct communication methods can be integrated into a blog to complement the comment functions by adding contact forms, chat applications, messaging, audio and video functions.
• If you are aiming at making money from your site, you can incorporate your own choice of advertising options.
• Files can be made available for download in such forms as photos, documents or e-books.
• A blog can be made public and viewable by all, made available for a select few to read or even completely private and used as a way of organizing the information from your online life.

This is only a short list of what I see as some of the main advantages of owning your own blog over using other applications. If you can think of more please let us know.