by Shannon Penrod and Sandra Beck

This is a great question, unfortunately there is no easy answer because blogs do so many different things.  Each blog has its own purpose. 

Let's take the High School Senior who has a blog. In his blog he commemorates all of the things that he and his friends do through out their Senior year.  The blog does many things for this young man.  It creates a record of his thoughts and feelings which will be great to look back on in 20 years.  It helps his grandmother who lives across the country to know what is going on in his world.  It helps him to communicate and connect with his friends and peers - his friends like reading the blog and seeing pictures of themselves posted on the web.  AND the college of his choice took the blog into consideration when accepting him to their university.  Not a bad work load for a little blog.

Let's take the case of the Realtor in San Francisco.  She writes a blog three times a week, sometimes showcasing property other times talking about the current market or even highlighting an area neighborhood.  This blog serves as an ongoing advertisement for the realtor's business.  The blog helps to create an atmosphere of knowledge and expertise, drawing clients in.  It also advertises property and brings in prospective buyers.  On top of these other great benefits the blog continually helps the realtor with search engine optimization by reminding the search engines that she is there and writing on a specific subject.

On a very basic level a blog sends a message to the world, what the message is will depend on the writer, who reads the message and what they do with the message is another topic all together.