Elke Braithwaite, Advertising Consultant at Artisan, shares her thoughts on the phenomena that is blogging.

Although nearly a decade old, Blogging is a still viewed as a relatively recent addition to my social networking artillery. Anyone with an hour to kill could wander aimlessly through Google only to unearth a wealth of information, inspiration and just plain chat about nothing with countless Blogs. Wikipedia defines a blog as a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links. I call it a self-serving license to trawl out ones day to day philosophies/quirks/monotonies to a faceless audience of ‘followers’ - in much the same way a cult leader might. It is a heady kind of power and I am drunk with enthusiasm imagining the masses reading what are more than likely relatively banal and poorly formed pieces that are essentially all about me! So why the obsession with blog-chasing?

There are currently hundreds of millions of active blogs floating out in digital space – which is an interesting fact when you discount the entire population of the 3rd world who presumably don’t blog. Yet. Of these hundreds of millions of blogs, how many are worthy of their place in interweb history? Better yet, how many are actually even maintained regularly? (Ed note: I haven't updated mine since Feb 2008... oops!)

After careful research, both for my benefit and yours, I have uncovered 5 key actions to get you blog-worthy. Read on:

Blog about your passion – no passion equals no dedication, so make sure you choose topics that you actually care enough about to continue writing past the first entry

Its all in a name – get yourself a Domain Name to make you stand out from the pack and appear more professional – even if this is not your initial goal. Having your own domain name can also lead you into income generating blogs. Whoopee!

Don’t be a waste of Digital Space! - make regular entries and updates to your blog. This will lead to more followers and ultimately more cred.

Know your audience – once you have developed a regular following you can start building relationships within your niche which will mean more followers and give your ego a lovely boost. :) After all, blogging is all about forming relationships.

Make Money-Money – Once you have established all of the above and have committed yourself to the task you can start to look at tons of new and interesting ways to make money from your blog. While making money from what is essentially an online journal may seem a little sell-out, everyone’s doing it so this is one band-wagon you’ll want to throw yourself onto. According to Dot Com Mogul, John Chow, the key here is to use as many advertising products as is possible. We’re talking banner ads, Featured sites with Text Link Ads, Sponsored reviews, etc.

With all of this insightful information, teamed with your own veritable cache of personal perspectives and experiences, one question remains, are you the follower or the followed???

Happy blogging!!!

My current fave blogspot - www.adcontrarian.blogspot.com... Check it out!

Do you keep a blog? Ever wanted to blog? Ran out of inspiration and found a clog in your blog? Wanna link up and share your experiences? Then you need to drop Xpose an email and we'll publish your thoughts in future Xpose!