Why would I want to blog?
Why would I want to blog?
What's coming up?
Blogs are great for staying in touch with friends and sharing your thoughts with the world. They're also a great way to indulge in your passions and connect with other people online who feel the same.
In this activity, you'll learn about the benefits of blogging and how to share your posts with readers.
Start activityBlog about what you want, whenever you want
For some people, blogging is like keeping a personal journal or compiling a scrapbook with photos, video and links to other websites. It's a great way to record your thoughts and feelings or document your activities.
You can post as often as you wish, but there's no pressure to keep to a schedule.
Blog to build a community
If you're blogging about a specific topic, you may find that regular posts will help you build up an audience of readers who share your passion. You might find that a small community grows in the comments section of your blog as readers share their views and experiences.
Blog to stay in touch
Some people use blogs as a way to stay in touch with family and friends. The trouble with social media sites like Facebook is that you don't always see everything your friends write, so you might miss something important. This doesn't happen with a blog, as everyone who visits can see everything you've written (unless you've made it private).
Blog instead of email
Just like a blog, a group email is a good way to keep in touch with many people at once. A blog, however, means you don't need to keep a mailing list and ensure that it's up to date. As soon as you publish your post, it is visible to anyone who visits your blog site.
Let people subscribe to keep updated
When you're creating your blog, you can add buttons that let visitors subscribe. This means they are automatically notified as soon as you publish a new post.
Blog to organise your thoughts
Unlike writing in a paper journal, blogging makes it easy to keep your ideas organised. There's no need to add the date, it's automatically added to every post.
When you're looking back over your blog posts to gather your ideas, you can easily jump to specific dates, see posts with specific labels or search for important words.
Blog for all, or just a few
With a blog, you can decide whether it's private or public. If it's public, your efforts can be seen by anyone who visits your site for as long as you decide to keep your blog.
Blog for just friends and family
If you prefer, you can control who sees your blog and restrict readers to certain people only - such as your friends and family. Most blog software allows you to set your blog to private and then lets you issue invitations to those with whom you want to share your blog.
True or false?
Click each card to find the answer. If you're not sure of the answers, you can scroll back up the page to see any of the previous slides.
You can add video and photos to a blog.
This is true. Blogs can be just text if you like, or to make it more interesting you can add photos or videos.
Everyone who has the internet can read your blog.
This depends on your blog settings. You can decide to make your blog public – for everyone, or private so just the people you choose can view it.
Congratulations!
You've completed the Why would I want to blog? activity and learned that blogging can be about anything you want. It can help you stay in touch, and you decide if your blog is public or private.
Next up, we look at ideas for subject matter in the What can I blog about? activity.
