A Blog About Blogs

Blogs are not only beneficial to communication majors but anyone else wishing to share a story or an idea. The potential for topics is endless, whether it’s a blog that’s more academic-centered (such as our PRSSA blog) or one that is active for your two-week vacation in the summer. Of course, it should be noted that creating a blog is no easy task.

I’m personally someone that loves looking through travel blogs, and stumbled upon an article once that provided advice from bloggers about creating a successful travel blog. And by successful, I mean they made some bank. As a reader, it’s easy to forget how much work goes into running a website. I did some research and came to learn that there are many, many steps to starting a blog, particularly when it’s through a paid service. With hosting sites, such as this Wix site or WordPress (which has two versions-paid and free) you have to choose one that fits your purpose and needs best. Some sites may have more designs or freedom when it comes to managing the blog, and others allow for a smoother transition if you start with a free one and choose to move to a paid site.

With paid sites, you can pay to have your own domain name (I could literally title my website “morganloveselephants.com”), whereas with the free ones you will have the hosting site’s name after the blog (such as name.wordpress.com or name.tumblr.com). In addition, when you pay for your own domain name, you own the site. With free hosting sites, you don’t, so the owner of the site could technically delete your blog. In the end, it’s completely up to you to decide which service you prefer, but there are many options when it comes to making the decision so research may be necessary to find what best suits your needs.

This is a site that I found to be really helpful, but there are also many other “blogs about blogging” out there to help start the journey:

http://www.bloggingbasics101.com/how-do-i-start-a-blog/

If/when you start a blog, another obstacle may be finding your audience. With that, social media is key. Look at our PRSSA blog, for example. Members can share posts through Facebook, which then reach individuals who would have never stumbled across them otherwise. Starting the blog and writing for it may be a lot of work, but promoting it (and thus yourself) is another challenge.

Photo by Morgan Root

#Blogging #Communication #Writing