Making it big these days is a bit different than it used to be, due to the popularity of the Internet. Technology has advanced to the point where individuals expect Internet access at high rates of speed and without the need for wires.
Information travels at the click of a mouse, which feels close to the speed of light. In such a rapidly moving environment, the Internet has become a sort of virtual convention hall, where social networking darlings, multimedia moguls, and top-ranked bloggers host live chats and fill the blogosphere and beyond with comments, slams, reviews, critiques, and rants.
Blogs, short for the original term web logs, initially served more as online journals than commercial websites. Followers enjoyed a personal look behind the scenes from the blogger’s perspective as an observer of the world.
But more recently, blogging has emerged as a form of social-media commentary with a dash of self-promotion, along with a side order of e-commerce and merchandising.
Beware before you blog
Blogging can often spin over into other opportunities. Look at top bloggers such as Perez Hilton, who transformed his video blog into a public persona and brand image that keeps his online audience engaged year after year.
But blogging can have a dark side as well. For one thing, it can make the blogger a target for stalkers and other extreme fans and followers.
Opportunities to post, galore
Posting to a blog can be as easy as snapping a photo with your smartphone and uploading it via a mobile app to a site. With such ease of use, blogging can feature almost anything and everything from delectable dishes with garnishes to video footage from a hiking trip.
Unfortunately, an endless stream of disconnected posts will diminish the quality of the content. Bloggers who amass greater and greater quantities of content can destroy their audience just as effectively as if they had posted nothing for weeks on end.
More than money is involved
Some bloggers manage to monetize their blogs. In other words, they receive affiliate residuals from advertisers and endorsement deals featured and linked to their site.
These relationships can prove profitable, but there is far more than money involved here. These monetary relationships can shut down a blogger’s journalistic freedom. It’s hard for an openly gay blogger to speak out against anti-gay or insensitive remarks by the CEO of one of his or her affiliate advertisers, for example.
That runs the risk of kill his or her income stream; or it might force the blogger to downplay the whole incident as just the remarks of an individual and not the practices and views of an entire company.
Blogging can cause an entrepreneur to have to reconsider notions about communication, media, publicity, marketing, and promotion as well as business basics such as branding and public image. If you choose to blog, you may have to decide between bland commercial pronouncements and eye-catching rants that may generate lots of reader interest but may not be so healthy for the future of your business.
