In this article, I will tell you about what is a blog and what are the most common types of blogs on the web
the blog is part of the digital marketing tools used by individuals or companies and creating a blog is an almost obligatory step for personal brands or companies to have a web presence outside social networks and to promote their services and products
What is a Blog?
The blog is an online diary where an individual publishes content on a specific topic or on a specific market niche.
the blog is a dynamic web page where the author publishes his thoughts, beliefs and experiences regarding the market niche he deals with unlike a site which is a static web page that works as an online showcase for brands and personal brands
It consists of a set of main pages that together determine the structure of the blog , for example: Homepage, About, Contacts, Sitemap and Private Policy
Why is it called blog?
the term blog was born in the nineties and became popular in 1999 and is the contraction of two words Web Log, and it literally means online log,
What is a blog for?
the blog serves for the following reasons:
- Sharing contents (personal, professional): the blog was born as a place to publish contents and share them with the people of the web
- Increase visibility (personal brand or brand): the blog allows you to acquire traffic from the web and this traffic allows you to grow in visibility regardless of whether you are a personal brand or a company
- Promote and sell products and services: the blog allows you to acquire traffic from the web in an organic or paid way and to promote your products and services to this traffic
the history of the blog
The first known blog from history was: links.net
blog created by Justin Hall a student of Swarthmore College in 1994 and also defined by the New York Times as the founding father of personal bloggers
among other things, the site is still online so if you are interested I suggest you take a look: Links.net
obviously in 1994 the term Blog did not exist but Justin’s blog proposed a set of links to other pages on the web before becoming the author’s personal online diary
if you want to learn more I suggest you watch his movie Overshare
the term Weblog was coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger before the term used for blogs was online journals or personal diaries
Jorn Barger began that year to publish on his RobotWidom hunting blog where he shares the results of his web searches and his favorite links on his homepage
the term web-log meant, as the literary translation suggests, the links on its homepage
in fact web-log literally means online log
in 1998 the first online community was born : The Open Diary
a platform that allowed and gave the tools for users to blogging and in addition gave a space for members to comment
it was also in this period that we moved from the term web-log to the more popular term blog
the expression “We blog” was used in 1999 by Peter Merlhoz playing with the word Weblog
the first blogs were manually created by programmers like Peter Merlhoz , there were no blogging platforms so the only option to create a blog was to write the code
but the following years saw the birth of the first blogging platforms such as LiveJournal, blogger , Altervista, Myspace
in 2009/2010 blogs suffered a crisis caused by the entry into the game of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter
the new platforms have been appreciated by the general public thanks to their simplicity of use and easy accessibility, it was much easier to create and manage a Facebook profile than a blog
crisis that has led to the change of blogs and blogging, today most blogs are digital marketing tools that help brands and companies to increase their online visibility
to learn more about the history of blogs, I recommend reading Italian books that talk about blogs.
the best Italian books that talk about blogging are:
- The Blog Up! Social history of the blog in Italy by Elisabetta Locatelli (2014)
- Blog Generation by Giuseppe Granieri (2005)
What kind of blogs are there?
- Personal blog : in a personal blog the author writes without a logical guideline, we find in personal blogs the reflections of the author and his thoughts, the comments of readers are often ideas for topics and new conversations
if you want to deepen I recommend reading of articles:
– How to create a personal blog
– The best personal blogs: What they are and how to find them - Corporate Blog : corporate blogs are blogs set up by companies that usually already have a website in this case the blog is used to create a less official, more reactive and more interactive communication channel. The corporate blog allows and simplifies communication between companies and customers
- News blog (magazine blog) : current affairs blogs are used to comment on news and current affairs, often used by journalists to make themselves known and bring their point of view on certain topics for example https: //www.macchianera .net / (blog by Gianluca Neri )
- Blog directories : blog directories are columns that collect links from different sites by dividing them into different categories
- Photography blog (photoblog): photography blogs are often used by artists and photography enthusiasts and in these blogs we mainly find photography and images, today this type of blog is less popular due to applications such as Instagram which is none other than Photoblog modern and social
- Political blog: these are blogs that aim to promote a certain political vision and position, see Beppe Grillo’s blog
- Vlog or video blog : Blog that mainly uses videos as the main content for communication
- Audio blog : it is a blog that contains sound files, the main difference with podcasts is that in an audio blog there can be both audio files and texts and even video in some cases while a podcast we find only audio files
- Wikiblog also known as bliki : it is a blog where the content can be edited by anyone or by a group of authorized users, they are the hybrids between wiki and blog
- Linklog: it is a type of blog that aims to be a list of links, linklogs are types of blogs that developed before the internet had operating systems such as Google, Bing etc.
- Tumblelog : it is a variant of the blog that favors shorter contents (links, images, quotes, dialogues) the term has been replaced by microblogs, some microblog sites have kept the term Tumbleblog to differentiate themselves from Twitter considered with the microblog model
- Thematic Blog : these blogs revolve around a well-defined topic, which becomes the focal point of the blog and which attracts readers interested in that topic
- Fashion and lifestyle blog
- Food blog (food blog)
- Travel Blog (travel blog)
- Blog tutorial (DIY Blog)
- Blog about animals
What are the most followed blogs ?
the most followed blogs in the world in 2022 are:
- Business Insider : 30.4 million per month
- Huffinfton post : 16.7 Million per month
- TMZ : 13.8 million per month
- The verge : 11.6 million per month
- Lifehacker 3.5 Million per month
Below is the list of other larger blogs for which I do not have the monthly traffic data (if you want to learn more you will find more information and numbers in the article -> Topics most followed blogs: the list of the best )
- Problogger
- Smart passive income
- Ryan Robinson
- Adam Enfroy
- Blogging Wizard
- Backlinko
- Ahrefs Blog
- Matthew Woodward
- Search Engine Journal
- Seo Power Suite Blog
