No one can say for sure when the very first blog appeared — most of the simplest predecessors of modern blogs are now archived and impossible to find.
Personal pages first began to appear in the 1980s, when pioneering bloggers realized the endless possibilities of the Internet.
One of the pioneers of blogging was a Swarthmore College student named Justin Hall. In January 1994, he created his own website where he published reviews of HTML examples he found through various links. All in all, nothing particularly remarkable, but it was enough for the New York Times to call him “the founding father of personal blogs.” His site was originally called his “personal home page”, then “first web diary” and finally “first web blog”.
That same year, Claudio Piñanes, who is currently IBM's senior social analytics manager, created a website called Open Diary, which included short personal notes.
The term “web blog” first appeared in December 1997 and was used by Jorn Barger, the creator of Robot Wisdom. His page was a log of his internet activity, where he, like Justin Hall, saved links.
This probably influenced the further course of events: in less than a year, platforms for creating and maintaining personal blogs began their debut.
How do I start blogging?
Understand who your audience is
Before you write your first blog post or article, you need to understand who your target audience is. How do I do this? Do a mini-study and ask yourself these questions: Who are they, my future subscribers? Are they like me? Do they look like my friends and acquaintances? What do they want to learn about through my blog? What will resonate with them?
Consider what age your content will be aimed at, what is the purpose of your blog, and whether it addresses the problems of your target audience. Take notes in your notebook.
Do market research
It sounds very complicated, but you can actually just check out social media pages that are similar to yours: see who follows them, what comments people leave, and which posts have received the most likes.
Introduce your reader
What is he or she like? What does he do every day, what are his habits, clothing style, hobbies, dreams and problems? Write down everything that comes to mind in a notebook. This effective technique will help you get into the shoes of your subscriber and make the content as engaging and useful as possible for your target audience.
Learn competitors' strategies
Find the pages of famous bloggers again. Almost any topic is suitable at this stage. What strategies do they use to attract and retain an audience? What helped them gain trust and become an authority among subscribers? Important: never copy posts by well-known bloggers. Your task is to understand how they brought the value of their unique content to the audience and use the methods that are right for you.
How to analyze a competitor's blog
1. Look at the blog's style, color palette, and theme and see how they fit together. Write down your thoughts in a notebook.
2. Study your competitor's writing tone and style. What techniques does he use to hurt and elicit a response from the audience? Consider whether this is right for you and take notes accordingly.
3. See what topics your competitor covers on the blog. Put topics that are appropriate for you in your notebook. Read the competitor's articles and posts carefully. Think about what he missed? Perhaps you can discuss the same topics by deepening them? Mark this in a notebook.
Write about topics you know
If you want your blog to be expert and engaging for subscribers, you need to choose a topic that you're good at. Readers or viewers are interested in following others' life experiences, mistakes, achievements and insights.
Make sure that what you're writing about isn't the only one you're interested in
You may know perfectly well how to raise a rare breed of rabbit, but are you sure that there will be someone else who will benefit from it? It is important that your topic attracts a fairly large number of readers.
To understand what to write about, you can do a mini-study. For example, you want to blog about video games. Learn which games are the most popular, what problems fans of these games face, etc. To do this, you can conduct a survey on the gaming forum, ask for opinions from friends and classmates, etc.
Find keywords for your future posts
Using keywords is a powerful way to make your blog visible to search engines and potential subscribers. See what words are used on competing blogs. Learn what results the search engine gives for each keyword. Mark everything in a notebook.
Determine your angle of view
Now you can find information on the Internet for any request. Think about what makes you stand out from the crowd? How can you present the information you have in an advantageous and unique way? What are your strengths? Do you write cool texts, shoot stylish videos, have a designer eye for things, or do you know how to take pictures like a pro? Think about how you can impress your audience and focus on that.
By the way, Progkids Online School has a blogging course that allows everyone to learn how to express themselves creatively! Sign up for a free trial class and take the first step towards successful blogging. Our teachers are active IT specialists with more than two years of teaching experience and will find a unique approach to every young star.
