Why
blog?
When
we asked folks at Blah,
Blah, Blog and Blog
Lab why they blog, here's a few of their answers:
- The boss told me to
- Recruiters will see me
- I may make money by blogging
- I am a writer, and therefore I blog
- I have something to say and want to share it.
Whatever
the reason, to get into blogging, the first step is reading a variety
of blogs to see what others write about and how they say it. How
would you have said the same thing? Could you make it better?
Ready
to do it? Make a commitment to writing the blog – it's a
discipline, not a whim.
How
do I start? There are a variety of ways to begin: write a comment to
a post in a blog you read; write a guest post on a blog; or just jump
in and launch your own blog.
What's
the format and style?
- Short posts are more readable than writing a novel
- Focus – a single thought for a post – if you have several thoughts to express, write several posts
- Give it a great title – make people want to read the post
- Size of the post is about 10 sentences/ 5 paragraphs
- Make every sentence relevant to your point
- Use your own voice to write the post – what's natural and best conveys your meaning...simple is better than flowery.
Where
do I find topics? Everywhere – when you write a blog you are always
looking for interesting items as topics –
meetings, books, events, conversations...
there's
plenty of stimulus available for material.
How
often should I post? Dick
says a
mature
blog is six posts – write and post, don't save them up and dump
them all at once. Writing once a week is fine – but be consistent
in posting weekly. Want to do more? Twice per week is good. More is
overkill – if you're on a roll, write the additional posts and hold
them in draft until ready to release.
Final
thought – how many blogs have you visited only to find the last
post was six months back...post consistently.
Ready?
Write
and post a blog today!
2 comments:
My strongest takeaway from Why Blog? was how the prospective bloggers are beset by a host of problems and fears practicing bloggers never see. Learning the culture and context of the open source practices that are now part of the foundation of our culture is tremendously liberating. We can do stuff now we couldn't before. They can't yet.
Learning about open source practices is like riding a bike - a little wobbly at first, but with more practice, we get better. After a while we don't even think about riding - we just do it...
Great comment!
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