Blogging is fairly new as far as written expression is concerned. A blog is very similar to a memoir or Journal but is plugged into the online community. Advantages of a blog include the ability to share your work with the intended audience easily, it allows collaborating with peers, and gives a medium to blend text with photos, videos, and web sources.
Blogging allows your work to be seen and shared with others who express the same interests as you. Like all writing, a blog has a certain audience in mind and is written to those with interest. The ability to immediately deliver your work to your audience allows information and opinions to be expressed right away and seen by the world. Traditionally having work published and distributed is a long process. When the published work is finally released, it may be no longer relevant to the fast paced world we live in. Furthermore, the audience is limited to those who acquire the print medium. In this blog in particular, allows me to talk about something that is important to me as well as a lot of others in the world. However, the topic is so niche that traditional publishing of my work is unrealistic. My audience, other gamers, are not going to spend time and resources buying a journal to look at photos of my army or my musings on tabletop tactics. The blog allows that info to be accessed freely by all.
The social aspect of blogging is the most important. having a blog is pointless if no one reads it. I could easily write about my armies and take photos of them and then store them; never to be seen by another person. That would be a waste of time. Blogs allow you to link with other bloggers and link their sites to one another. This allows everyone in the online community to share their ideas and work with one another. There are sites that consider themselves blog hubs. These sites are larger with a high traffic rate, meaning they have a lot of visits everyday. They usually address the entire hobby. These hub sites then link to smaller more specific blogs, like my own and feature them on the main page of the hub site. This allows visitors to find your blog and read what you have to share. My blog is currently associated with the blog, From the Warp, a hub site. The site then helped my blog get some additional traffic and its first comment. This communal aspect allows blogger collaboration. Hub sites like From the Warp will host articles that all can contribute to with their own opinion and spin. The submitted pieces are then assembled in a final article that readers can view and then follow links to the individual sites of all contributing authors. This furthers the community by combining everyone's hobby blogs into a community of hobbyists. Similar to people hanging out and sharing their tips and tricks in person.
Finally, A blog allows you to combine all sorts of media into a single, central location. The blog form allows the author to incorporate their written work with photography and film. This adds depth to the posts on a blog. I can tell you about my models and my army, but showing you as well gives the reader a better grasp on what I am presenting. Video does the same thing, supplementing the written word with video and audio giving more depth to the topic presented. Also, if you reference another article, a link can be provided. an instant citation. If I am discussing how a blogger's tank conversion inspired me to do one myself, I can give a link to his site too. This dovetails back in with the communal aspect mentioned before. The convergence of all the different medias into a single place allows the author to better express themselves and the audience to better understand what the author is trying to share.
These are the main reasons for blogging. The blog form allows a new delivery for writing. This gives people the ability to share their work with the world.
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