When I hear the word blog, I automatically think social gathering. Many blogs are created for people to network with others. People are looking for others with the same interests, believes, hobbies; they are looking to express their ideas and connect with others. When I asked my son, who is 13, what is the blog and what it is used for, he said, he thinks of a blog as a tool to “get information from people who might know more than you”.
The questions formed in this assignment, how blogs can help education or a business, gave me another perspective on the blog. I started my research and found out that it is more common that I first thought to use blog as a learning tool. Searching many sites I came across many uses for blogs for teachers. You can teach writing, critical thinking, lead discussions; all using blogs as a medium. According to Don Crowther’s (2007) 101PublicRelations.com “Blogging is sweeping the Internet. It’s estimated that there are at least 8 million blogs in the US alone, 32.5 million worldwide.” He further states that most blogs are indeed individual, geared more towards personal information, expression of self as daily or weekly journals. However there is an increasing number of blogs used for networking and advertising your own business. His website lists many reasons why almost every business should use a blog. Some examples include: inexpensive and fast to publish, immediate with updated information, used as wide variety of content, great to position your company in the eyes of customers and quick and easy to push content to sites/ blogs of others. He lists blogs most important role as “blogs convert into sales and profits”. He also lists 2 books full of additional information that could be beneficial to any business that is starting out and looking for exposure. With the Internet growing every day, I believe blogs are way beyond the personal information and diaries. I think blogs are a growing way of new advertisement and self-promotion for many businesses.
Crowther, D. (2007). How To Build Your Business Using Blogs. Retrieved March 3, 2010 from, http://101publicrelations.com/bloggingforbusiness.html
Image courtesy of flickr.com retreived from http://flickr.com/photos/declanjewell/517966692.html
What a great quote from your son. The key there is to make sure we are teaching them to identify the validity of the source. I am beginning to see how many of these tools may be out of the question for you to use in your work environment, but love the way you are able to make the assignment work for you anyway! If it can't work to network due to privacy issues, it may work for promotion of product or company. Great post, Monika.
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