Blogs can be used for personal or business reasons. For this course we will look at both avenues, but we will be approaching the topic primarily from a business perspective. We will also give some emphasis on setting up WordPress as a full website with a blog section that is still geared toward business, if that is an avenue that you wish to pursue.
A personal blog can be used to communicate your thoughts to the world on a public level. However, on platforms such as WordPress, you can add posts in a restricted access area in order to share them only with your family and friends.
Some of the most popular of these are travel blogs, which let friends and family know how your daily life is going while living or travelling abroad. Most of these types of blogs are usually made for fun or for interaction with other people. A blog with a well-written story and photos can be a lot more telling and narrative in nature than a few Facebook or X microblog posts. Conversely, international friends may want to know what life is like in your home city. Some people’s personal blogs become so frequented and popular that they evolve into business blogs.
With business blogs, the primary purpose is to generate traffic that can be converted into revenue. The revenue can come from pay-per-click programs like Google AdSense, affiliate programs, or the sale of a product or service. The primary purpose of the blog is to establish a real connection with potential customers (audience members) by building real credibility and trust. Business blogs have the potential to earn $70,000+ per year if done correctly and become successful.
When you're blogging for business, you can have your whole website be in a blog format, with the latest stories first on the home page. That in itself can be a stand-alone site as your entire business, or it can be affiliated with your business' already existing conventional website. Alternatively, you could set WordPress up as a conventional website for your business, which then contains your blog as one of many sections.
Please have a read through this website [1] so you can learn about 35+ WordPress Statistics for the Budding Webmaster.
Log in to Moodle [2] and give two examples of what you consider a good personal blog and two examples of what you consider a successful business blog. Post the links to these blogs, and explain in a few sentences why you chose them.