A little off topic, but I have been asked a lot recently about blogging.  It is an interesting question… "What is a blog?"

What a blog is (I think…) 

A blog is like a personal newspaper about the things that most interest you. For some people, that is themselves, for others it is the latest web 2.0 products, others still talk about branding, marketing, children, business, sustainability… virtually everything under the sun. It’s time based, so generally relevant to events of the day… But blogs have something extra that newspapers never will: Every blog is just a small part of a much larger conversation; what happens here is the result of what has gone on somewhere else in the blogosphere. The topic changes rapidly, the arena leaps from one end of the internet to the other and we all have our space, which is great because consumer driven journalism is something that fascinates me.

But if I’m to be brutally honest, we’re not doing that well. I think this quote sums up the problem we as bloggers are currently creating:

Because blogging has also become a popularity contest. We are not content to simply write and see if anyone is touched by our words. We want readers and we want them now. We cling to the popular news of the day instead of exploring subjects that may matter to us but mean nothing to all but a few people. Blogging ‘rules’ state that we should limit ourselves to one area and have a similar ‘tone’ with each post. I don’t like it. From one day to the next, the things that interest me can vary wildly, so can my mood. I don’t see the point in jumping on the bandwagon and impressing people with our ability to copy and paste someone else’s news.

I think everyone should have a blog. Everyone has views on the world and everyone could benefit immensely from having a platform to share them with the world.  But we should not try to copy the newsgivers of the past and cling to sensationalism. The greatest joy of a blog is the fact you have put yourself out there and someone from the other side of the world can ‘get’ you. Never before has this been possible and it is the ultimate in marketing. A blog is truly you, on the internet.