We all have things to say. Many of us have opinions we want to express or stories we want to tell. Not only that but we all like discussing our idea's and our views about certain topics, possibly about music, arts, a show we have just seen. Of course many will also be political in nature. Whichever it is there used to be some difficulties making our thoughts generally known.
Many people kept diaries and such great diarists as Samuel Pepys have been a source of knowledge, and of course amusement over a long period. There were also letters to the editor of different publications, usually to express an opinion at some article they had published. The first few pages of Time Magazine and The Economist, not to mention large sections of newspapers are devoted to this form of personal expression.
But much of this has changed forever and is still developing at a furious pace. With the rolling out of the internet there are now a myriad of ways to go about making one's voice heard. The first and most obvious way is in the comments section of online newspapers and magazines. Click through any article and, where allowed by the editors, there will be a discussion. On some controversial topics these contributions may run into the thousands.
A slightly out of date way, and also unlikely to get much exposure are the chat rooms. Many chat rooms are open discussion groups but when they are unstructured are usually pretty pointless and are often dominated by one or two people with the others in the room being ignored or worse.
Facebook and other social media are open and free. But the only people who are likely to see your opinions and arguments will be your online "friends". Most of the postings on Facebook are only a few entries long as time brings more contributions to the fore so postings age very quickly.
One can join a forum. There are many forums and one can find many that will allow one to open one's own "thread" to which the other members of the forum may or may not contribute.
The best way, however, is to open one's own blog. A blog is a contraction of the words Web log and started life as a chronological listing of one persons thoughts and opinions, with the most recent being displayed first. Pretty soon however most blogs started to allow contributors to express their opinions. Unlike chat rooms but somewhat like forums these tend to be archived so a topic may remain "live" with contributions and discussion points being added for an extended period.
Many people would not know how to start a blog. Actually the process is quite easy. This very useful website will provide guidance, tips and a detailed description of the steps one has to take to start, open, host, advertise and maintain a blog.
Running one's own blog is a hugely satisfying thing to do and provides a useful focus point to keep one's opinions and ideas focused and to the point.
This useful website will take one step by step through how to start a blog.
