 Hi, my name is Prashant and I'm from IIT Kanpur and continuing with our lecture series on information and communication Technologies. I'm here to talk about blogs. You all must have heard about blogs You must have read about it. Some people have blogs some are bloggers some call themselves bloggers So who are these people and what do they do? What is a blog and we are here to answer those questions and hopefully towards the end of this lecture You'll know how to have your own blog. So let's come to the word blog blog is a made-up word it wasn't there in the English language till a few decades back and it's made up of two words web, which we understand as internet and worldwide web and log which is Is a diary or a journal entry or a record? So when we take the B from the web and the word log We get the word blog So it can be used as a noun that is a Blog is an internet entity like a website Which acts as a journal or a diary or a canvas to post your thoughts and opinions pertaining to a particular subject matter It can also be used as a verb that means to blog Which means to maintain a web-based journal diary or notebook and Who is a blogger? one person who blogs Now that we know about the word blog we can try and understand it in more details So what are the various kinds of blogs? There are personal blogs in which Blogger may write about his or her own personal life. What's happening? What are they thinking? It can be about anything friends family Relationships your career. So that's a personal blog Then we have corporate blogs which companies and organizations maintain as a way to communicate with Their customers or other people they could be informational like what are the new Advances the company has made they can be To debunk myths if there's a go if there's a rumor going around about the company they can post a statement on their official blog and Counter or discount that rumor then there are genre or field specific blogs You have blogs on data analysis. You have blogs on agriculture. You have blogs on mathematics You have blogs on physics where anybody who's an expert of the field Comes and writes about that particular field Then you people actually use blogs as archives too. That means they collect Everything interesting that they find on the internet and they put it on a blog So that blog eventually becomes a file of everything they found interesting on the internet I thought that was a very interesting use of blogs Then there are discussion-oriented blogs some bloggers post questions and ask their readers to comment on those questions and Then there are informational blogs Which are mostly factual in nature for example if I write about if I write a blog about Jupiter So it's an informational blog So now we will try and analyze what a blog is So here we have taken the official Google blog and We'll see what are the various parts of a blog The first part of a blog is the blog address if you go to HTTP colon slash slash Google blog blog spot dot in you will find this blog so every blog has a blog address which is a URL like every website has a URL every blog has a URL Next is the header image the highlighted part is the header image which is there to make the blog look good Then comes the important part, which is the blog title What is your blog going to be called? For example, if you write a book your book is called something the book has a title similarly your blog has a title So here it is called the Google official blog it has to be very simple It should convey what it is about Then you have the blog description, which is a very small summary of what the blog does For example, this official Google blog is about insights from Googlers into our products technology and the Google culture which means Everybody who works at Google is free to write on this blog About what Google is coming up with how are they doing it and what is the life in a Google complex? then The most important part of a blog is the posts itself Which is sort of like a chapter if you if you consider Blogs to a blog to be a book then a post is like a chapter of that book so in this post You have the post title You have the content Content can be text. It can be images. It can be videos The more Engaging the content is the better your blog is So then you have the share widget that means I can share this post on Google plus or I can tweet about it as you must have known and I can ask my Facebook friends to like it or share it through Facebook This is to gain readership. You use Twitter Facebook all those social media tools to help your blog be popular and Then there is a permalink Permalink is the URL of your post blog address is the URL of your blog and permalink For this post is this and a permalink is the URL of your post Then you have some side links which contain your profiles or they may contain tags Or they may be an archive of your posts These all Make up a blog the blog address the image the title description post side links This is the anatomy of a blog Now comes the question why should I blog or why should you blog? you should blog because you have something important to say or You have knowledge to share about your subject You should also blog because it is free you can get started for free and It's a good way to it's actually a good way to reach out and connect to people and get their opinions on what you think and it broadens our horizons and at the same time if your blog is informational You're actually telling people about your subject which might be useful for them Then that's exactly our next point that blogging allows you to reach a large number of people all over the world since it's on the internet anybody present anywhere can read your blog and They can comment on it. So if I'm for example, if I'm writing about agriculture in Uttar Pradesh and a farmer from Or a fellow student Agriculture student from Kerala is reading it then I can communicate with that person through my blog and Maybe we can discuss better ways to talk about agriculture. We can come up with new ways to improve agriculture Not only that I could even talk to people in Germany or US and talk read their blogs on agriculture. So it has a lot of advantages Which is our next point that blogs are interactive you can discuss your ideas and opinions with your readers and If you're really good at what you write if your blog is exceptional it provides very good information then You can even own money by blogging you can use Google ads you can provide ads on your blog and It depends on the number of readers you have and the number of readers you have depends on the content you post So it's difficult to own a very sustainable living By blogging, but you can earn some money by blogging if only if you are exceptional that's our Condition you have to be really good at blogging and then maybe you can think about earning some money How how do you start a blog you can use some free blogging services like the one we just saw that was a Google blogger You can access it at blogger.com. Okay free blogging services are those where you can just create an account and start blogging It's like buying a notebook. You write your name on it and you start writing in that notebook It's as simple as that so you have Google's blogger then you have wordpress Which is slightly more complex than Google blogger, but it provides you with a lot many features Then you have medium it's a fairly new blogging platform and it's been doing really well it but remember that to start a medium Account you need you need a Twitter account So if you have a Twitter account, I think medium is a very good option for you to start blogging And then you have tumblr.com, which is mainly popular amongst young people Then you have your hosted blogging tools in which you Get your own server you deploy your software and you Blog using that software. Of course, it requires a bit of technical expertise you need to be Someward an expert in IT if you are then and you can deploy your own blogs then a ghost is A very good platform wordpress again allows you to host your own blogs on your own service and You can learn more about these at this link that is provided. You can even blog in Hindi It might sound like we can only blog in English because that's all we have talked about But there are a lot of ways to blog in your own language For example blogger.com provides you tools to blog in Hindi I know of a lot of bloggers who blog in Hindi not just Hindi they blog in Russian They blog in Japanese you can blog in any language you want blogging services provide you with a lot of support Depend depending on your readership. You should decide whether you should post in Hindi or if you should post in English if If I'm trying to reach out to farmers of India, I would prefer writing it in Hindi because they are more well-versed with Hindi So you have to decide your language based on what you think Your readers are going to understand So you can check out more at Hindi blogs net. This is another resource that we have pointed out Then what makes a good blogger? It's not enough to just start a blog and just type away at the keyboard You have to be good at what you do if you want sustainable readership If you want people to visit your blog if you want them to keep visiting your blog every now and then and Comment on your post and discuss You need to number one point is focus on the content of the posts. That's The basic premise of being a good blogger. You have to focus continuously on the content of your posts You have to before you write you have to spend a lot of time thinking about How you're going to write what you're going to write and what's the best way to present your thought? So you if you use images or videos Then it keeps the readers engaged. It's not just a big wall of texts. You need to have images in your blog posts the second Important habit of a good blogger is that they post regularly but not unnecessarily Do not write if you do not have anything to write Post regularly think about what you're going to post and then do it. It's not necessary to post daily It can be a weekly blog. It can be a monthly blog. It can be a fortnight blog Just don't post unnecessarily because you haven't posted in some time when you feel like posting and you have a good reason to post do that Engage in healthy conversations with your readers Your readers will comment on your post. They'll give their opinions on the post Talk to them Try and understand them so that you know how you can write better how you can reach out better For example, if I am trying to teach them about something through my blog I need to understand how they understand what I write and as I understand that I will make my blog better They also read other blog there are too many people blogging and it's always Helpful to read their blogs to connect with them if you're good enough And if you think they're good enough you can suggest Other blogs to your friends and the other bloggers can suggest your blog to your to their friends And that that's how a blog becomes popular Of course, you have to work to popularize your blog. You have to use Facebook Twitter and All these mediums to get some readers onto your website and With I think this is enough knowledge for you to go ahead and start your own blog So there's a little self-assessment assignment You can create your own blog and agriculture. We're calling it an agriculture blog And it will be a genre specific blog You can write a post about who you are and what is your blog about? Share the link of that blog Share the blog address when I mean link. I mean the blog address you can share the blog address on the forums in Agmoogs.in You can discuss in the forums about How are you going to popularize of your blog and how are the other people thinking of popularizing their blogs? You can read the blogs of other people So if you engage in these four steps in the coming few days You will get a good hang of blogging and once you think about it a bit more You'll be a very good blogger. So happy blogging and thank you