What is a blog? After all the publicity and buzz around blog and blogging, still many people don’t know what exactly is a blog. If you talk to people about it — even if they frequent a blog during their search for information — they may not know they are reading a blog. You might see a blank stare on their face.

In this post, I am trying to explain what a blog is. Of course, it is hard to come up with one definition that fits all. It’s like blind men describing an elephant. Unless you actually walk through a blog and see it as a whole, every definition on earth is not going to be 100% accurate.

Let’s see some definitions about a blog:

A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. –Wikipedia

Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. –Webopedia

A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links. –MarketingTerms.com

A website that displays in chronological order the postings by one or more individuals and usually has links to comments on specific postings. –Answers.com

Each definition offers a different perspective about a blog. Obviously one can not explain a blog in detail in one sentence. Wikipedia, for instance, has to link to three separate pages for the terms user-generated, journal and chronological order. MarketingTerms.com immediate follows the definition with three paragraphs of additional information.

So What Really is a Blog?

A blog is a web content management software that automatically archive previous posts and display recent ones in reverse chronological order.

While not compulsory, a blog is often frequently updated. It also features comments from readers and authors.

A feature and benefit I would like to highlight is the fact that when someone blogs, they automatically enters the world of blogs, also known as “blogosphere.” Assuming that a blog is made public, in minutes since a blogger post a new entry to his/her blog, the world will know it.

How can it do that? A blog uses “pings” to notify other hosts about recent updates. Ping is a notification packet that tells the destination host about important information regarding the update. Blog search engines like Technorati then come to the blog and fetch the update, to be indexed on their site in minutes (sometimes seconds.)

This is what makes a blog different than a traditional website. Another blog author could also comment on your blog through his/her blog. This is called trackbacking. So, when you are blogging, you practically open yourself into the market. You can listen and get involved in conversations with the world.

The conversation part is the social aspect of a blog. We don’t want to get into much details about this yet. But, suffice to say that a blog does a lot of things to manage your web presence, including the interactivity not available in static websites.

When it comes to business, your prospects and customers would feel closer to you, which in turn will develop trust faster and further. I hope we agree that if used correctly, this can easily shorten sales cycle. After all, the marketplace is about conversation, isn’t it?