What is Blogging and how to blogging

What Is Blogging?

                                                 
What is blogging?

It seems outlandish now- a-days, if some one asks ‘what is blogging?’ For blogging is a very common trend in our time. We all have our own perception of blogging and many of us have our own blogs too. So humor me as I go over some different ways we understand what blogging is. Add your own ideas in the comments.
  
Characteristics of a Blog

How would you know it is a blog? Answer is, the way the writings are placed on a blog makes it different from other forms of writing. Articles called posts are listed in chronological order. Each post has its own unique web page address called a Permalink. Posts usually (not always) allow readers to leave comments. Writing in any other environment, which lacks these typical characteristics, is not blogging. Blogging must be done on a blog or using blog software of some kind. This may be the most technical definition of blogging I think. 

Depict your thought authentically on the blog

Apart from the technical characteristics, the most important aspect of a blog is the authenticity of the posts. Now the question arises ‘what is to write?’ Write anything. Just depict your thoughts. Yeah, the posts may be on wide range of subjects and on diverse purpose, as they may be to inform, to teach, to entertain and to provoke or anything else, but must be genuine i.e. plagiarism free. 

It’s a discussion, Not a Monologue

As I have said a moment ago, depict your thought. Yeah deliver your thoughts to others by your writings on a blog. But when you write a blog post, people can leave comments and even reply to each other in the comments, as though it were a miniature forum just for that post. So it eventually becomes a discussion, your thought no longer remains a monologue when on blog. People can tweet and re-tweet your post. They can link to it on Facebook, Delicious, and a million other sites. They can have conversations about it in Google Buzz or other social sites. Even they can write their own blog posts in response to your blog post. In other words, they can talk back to you and they can talk to each other, and they can do this even if you don’t allow comments on your blog. 

It’s Writing for Others, Not Yourself

I said, depict your thoughts. But that doesn’t mean, you are writing a diary online. Blogging may appear to be writing about your self, but only if doing so is beneficial to others. In other words, there’s a lesson to learn from a blogger’s personal story. The personal is the universal, and the more personal it is, the more universally it applies. Again, it’s an inconsistency. 

It’s beyond Writing

Blogging is not just writing. It can include images, audio, video, slide shows, eBooks, and all other modes of what we call “embedded media.” Blogging does not even have to include words: a blog post can have only pictures, for example. You could even choose to not have a headline. Since part of the definition of blogging is technically as a digital publishing platform, the mechanics of publication on the web don’t care about the medium. That part’s up to us. Do it regularly and you have yourself a pod cast? Blogging is beyond writing.

It’s Everything

Blogging is now what television used to be. It’s what newspapers used to be. It’s what magazines used to be. It’s what books used to be. Granted, right now, all these other media are still in use, and perhaps they always will be, at least, within our lifetimes. The funny thing is that every thing is transfigured and accumulated in blogging. It’s as the entire world is being slowly converted to digital, whether we like it or not. It has become everything. 

It’s Nothing

In conclusion, blogging is nothing but a tool, a method, a means. It’s a channel, a medium, a facilitator. Without people, it’s nothing.  Blogging is not a replacement for human relationships. It does not automatically confer a winning mindset or happiness to its practitioners. Its existence or extinction means nothing. What we do with it? That’s what matters.

So, blogging is almost everything and it is nothing as well. The understanding of what blogging is depends up to you.