Bravr's content queen Adilla Parish explores this history of blogging.

Anyone can blog. Every day via email, social media, television, in the news, we are exposed to some form of blogging. We read blogs, hear about blogs, watch films about blogs; it is almost impossible to go anywhere without glimpsing or hearing about some blog or another.

The term “blog” is a curious one; for many it conjures up images of people who think that their life is SO interesting that we all want to read about it (and then, possibly, watch a film about it too). Like them, hate them or love them, blogs are undeniably a crucial element of online marketing, whatever industry you are in.  Here is your whistle stop tour of the history of the blog.

1994 -A blog by any other name…. Like most great social media advances, the first blog is thought to have been created by a college student in the States. Justin Hall created Links.net in 1994, calling it as his “personal homepage”.

1997-The weblog is born. In 1997, early blogger Jorn Barger referred to his online ponderings as “web logs”, after the practice of “logging the web” as he surfed.

1998 - Blogging the news. The first known blog on a conventional news website was written by Jonathon Dube about Hurricane Bonne for The Charlotte Observer.

1999 – Coining the blog. In 1999, prolific blogger Peter Merholz broke down the word “weblog” into two words: “we blog”. From this time forth, the term “blog” has been used as both a noun and a verb: “I’m blogging” and “Did you read that blog”.

2000 and beyond….. The start of the 21^st Century heralded the boom years for the blog; in 1999 there were 23 recorded blogs and by 2006 there were over 50 million. Blogs were starting to be used to tackle serious subjects; politics, news, controversial topics and as such had become recognised as valid media channels for news. Today there are over 153 million blogs. Everyone seems to have a blog (even the British Monarchy!), although that’s not to say everyone has a blog you’d want to read.

So why blog?

Maybe because there are so many blogs out there, companies underrate the importance of blogging. Maybe you think it’s irrelevant, or that blogging is too low-brow for you. Whatever your industry, whatever the size of your company, whoever you are, blogging will increase your visibility, brand awareness and credibility. If you are too posh to blog, call it “news”, “ updates” or go retro and call it your “weblog”; the label is not important; what is crucial is increasing your online activity and staying in the spotlight.

At Bravr, we love a good blog. We enjoy taking information, no matter how complex or simple, thrilling or (dare we say it?) boring and turning it into a piece of content that brings our clients’ businesses to the foreground. If you want help moving your organisation forward, get in touch.