I subscribe to a number of helpful blogs for writers and blogs by writers (Check out the blog roll to the right). I can barely keep up with all the posts, especially the link salad posts, which I love. I rely on these posts to provide a synopsis of the current goings on in the writing world because I’m not going to search on Google to find out. Part of me wishes I could provide something so useful, but I have to remind myself that I blog to be part of the online writing community and learn more about writing. My hope is that somebody will benefit from my posts relating some of my experiences as a fledgling writer. I like to throw in posts about what I’m reading, though I’m no book reviewer.
The conventional wisdom on the internets is that you must have a blog if you want to be part of the conversation–and that’s true to a point–and that your blog should contain information that’s useful and demonstrates your expertise in some way (especially if you are marketing–no one wants to buy from some shlub that doesn’t know what he’s talking about). It’s a good conventional wisdom, because, after all, we are selling ourselves in some way. Along with my hope that anyone reading this blog will find it enjoyable, I also hope that, somewhere down the line, an agent will ask, “Do you have a blog?” and I’ll say, “Why yes, yes I do.”
Lastly, I find that blogging allows me to do some more writing to better hone my skills. I tend toward the verbose, so I try to use my blogging as an exercise in economy a la Strunk and White.
Why do you blog?
If you are interested how to fine tune your blog, here are a few great resources I used in my former life:
Hubspot.com – The HubSpot Inbound Internet Marketing blog covers all of inbound marketing – SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Landing Pages, Lead Generation and Analytics.
seomoz.org – SEOmoz serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help every SEO to be the best they can be.
WordPress – Yeah, I’m pimping my blog host because I like it.