A client recently requested a quote for a new website. The site required at least five different sections, where the site owner would have the ability to administer the site. The proposal requester mentioned that maybe a blog would be sufficient for the first section. He also suggested that maybe a blog would be sufficient for the second section. For the third section… yup, another blog!

Now, this doesn’t seem right at all, huh?!

I believe there’s a lot of confusion when it comes to the term blog. This term gets thrown around all day long, by people who know not what a blog really is.

Simply put, a blog is merely a collection of articles written by one person, generally arranged by date, online and accessible via a web browser. Lots of blogs also use some means of taxonomy, or in other words, they use some form of categorization or classification of articles.

The term originally comes from web log, which refers to a log of articles, diary entries, or even notes organized by date. After a while the two words were combined, and hence our buzz word blog.

A blog is comprised of posts

Each entry in a blog is a post. A post could be in article format. So one blog post isn’t a blog. It’s just a post within a blog.

A blog is targeted

Most blogs (at least successful ones) are targeted to a specific audience. Many bloggers are also web designers or developers, and lots of them will have blogs about–surprise, surprise!–web design and web development.

Other bloggers know nothing about web design or development, but they do know lots about whatever field they’re in. Marketers, researchers, salesmen, schemers, entrepreneurs, and thousands of others might blog about their specific field. They may also have huge audiences

But the key here is that blogs are generally targeted to a specific market or audience.

A blog isn’t an ecommerce site

Lots of blogs have ads plastered all over the blog. This is a way for a blogger to earn some income from sharing her valuable information. If her readers appreciate any of the ads and click on them, the blogger may get some income out of it.

But a blog doesn’t have to sell anything. It doesn’t have to display ads. Again please see the above definition of a blog.

Summary

Stop referring to each blog post you make as a blog; the whole thing is the blog, not just the one post. And if your site needs five different blogs within it, then maybe you’d better rethink the organization of your site. Maybe you just need a content management system (aka CMS)…