Why should you start a blog?

One of our aims here at Gamblz is to get each and every one of you reading this to start a blog - why? Apart from being lots of fun (no really, it is!), blogging is a great way to focus your social networking activities, can help friends and family keep up with what you’re doing, and if you’re so inclined… can even make you some decent money.

Up to a few years ago, blogging was seen as more of a personal journal than anything really substantial, but as blogging software has improved, so to has the scope of sites that are built on its foundations. Most blogging software today act as fully functioned Content Management Systems, which means you have a lot more flexibility in the type of product that you can produce - even with little or no technical ability, blogging makes it easy for you to stake out your own little corner of the web and share your interests with the world.

Reasons for Blogging

Everyone will have different goals for their blog, but that’s ok, because of a blogs simplicity (and flexibility), it’s appropriate for many different situations. Here’s a quick look at some of the reasons why you might start a blog.

• Keeping a Personal JournalIt may be the oldest use for a blog, but it’s still a valid reason to start one. Do you want to share your life with the world? or maybe just an important event? Blogging is a great medium for you to express your thoughts, share photos and videos and maintain a permanent record.

  You might also be interested in the recent trend of ‘microblogging’ using tools such as Twitter to send short status updates (twitter restricts you to 140 characters max per update). Twitter allows two-way conversations (a bit like comments on a blog), but is a lot more immediate. You can follow Gamblz on Twitter to communicate with me and stay up to date on what’s happening here.

• Online Reputation ManagementAnother key goal for some bloggers is to help manage either their personal, or companies online reputation. When you search for your name (or your companies name), what do you see? Having your own blog lets you add content that you would like people to read about you and promote it to the point where it shows above other results on Google. You can also use similar techniques to ‘bury’ information on the search engines that you don’t want people to see.
• Make Money from BloggingBlogging is an excellent way for you to make money online. You’ll need to build your blog to a point where you have a decent amount of traffic, but once you’ve achieved that, you’ve got plenty of options available for you to make money, such as direct advertising, affiliate programs and developing your own products to sell.

  Online Gambling affiliate programs are an excellent choice and one any gambling related blog should seriously investigate.

• Build Name/Brand RecognitionBlogging is an excellent way to build recognition for you name or brand. You might want to build yourself as an expert in a field, or build association or recognition for your brand, blogging gives you a great medium to put regularly changing content in front of your target audience and slowly build a professional relationship with them.
• Share Knowledge / ConnectYou might just have a love for sharing information and connecting with others that share your interests. Blogging is a great way to disperse information and connect with interested people.

No matter what your goals are, blogging has something for everyone - I’ve only just scratched the surface here, you might have a completely different goal in mind for your blogging… and there’s nothing wrong with that, it really is a flexible medium.

If you’re already a blogger - what goals are you focused on? Has this changed since you first started blogging? Let us know in the comments