Writing blog is like keeping a dairy. Blog allows you to keep track of things that you do and share it with world. A good blog not only helps author, it also helps readers to improve their knowledge. Writing blogs seems to be easy in first sight, but when you do its not that easy.
Writing is a different art compared to talking. Talking comes natural to humans but not writing. Writing is something we have cultivated as a culture. So when I ask some developer to talk about what they are doing, they can happily talk for hours. But if I ask developer to write down what they did, they will have hard time doing it. This is one of the main reason for not having documenation for most of software tools.
Writing needs a focused manner of expressing your understanding to fellow person. A good blog always wins its audience by its simplicity and precise explanation to the point. So writing not only keeps track of your work, but also teaches you how to express your understanding in a better way.
In any job, writing is a primary communication skill. You have to write documents to express your ideas to your clients. You have to write mails to express your ideas to higher management. So if anything helps you to improve writing skills better you should start doing it. Blogging is one of the best way to do that.
Blog is collection of articles shared by a person or collection of people on web. You have already read many blogs like Verge,Techcrunch in the read section. As you can read others blog, you can write your own too.
Eventhough blogging seems to be a lot work which involves thinking, writing and publishing, following reasons should get you start blogging.
Online dairy
Blog is the best way to share your work with outside world. If you put your understanding of a given framework or a language out there in web, people find you to be authoritative on that subject. Not only it gives you more legitimacy, it also helps in job interviews. Blog is one the way people can understand your passion and skill set on a given subject.
Improved communication
As mentioned above writing is basic communication in companies. You have to communicate effectively in order to win over your fellow mates. So writing blog helps you immensely improve your communication.
Share your point of view
As we learn new things, we develop our own view of the world. Sometimes your view may be radically different from majority of others. Having your own blog allows you to share your point of view on things. Sometimes this may help others to look at things differently.
Fun
Finally writing blog and sharing is a lot of fun. It may be challenging in the beginning, but as more people read your blog and appreciate your hardwork it will be a fulfilling exercise.
There are many ways one can create blog. You can write and share blogs that are hosted by others. You can host your own too.
As a beginner, its better to get started with hosted blogs. Once you become comfortable, then you can host your own blog.
There are many companies which gives you free blogging software to create blogs. Some of them are
Wordpress is one of the most famous blogging software out there. In wordpress.com you can create blog for free. Wordpress comes with nice tools for content creation and publishing. One of the most famous blog "Techcrunch" uses wordpress.
Tumblr is another blogging platform where you can create your blogs. In Tumblr you can follow other blogs too. Tumblr is well known for its great UI, ease of use. Tumblr is also popular for creating photo blogs.
Blogger is a blogging platform by Google. If you have gmail id, its the fastest way to get started. Blogger integrates well with other google services like search, ads etc. I created my first blog on blogger.
There are many more other blogging sites, but above are the top three. You can try out those and settle with one you like.
You can host your blog yourself using using Github and Jekyll. For more info read through jekyll documentation
Having a blog is the best way to communicate with the world. What are you waiting for? Go create your blog today.