Darren Rouse of Problogger.net posted a really good article about on why he things personal blogs can be helpful.
Personally, I’ve had to step away from my personal blog to get my new business site up (this site). With dmiracle.com, I’ve integrated a blog into my site, changed my marketing focus and created a whole new site structure to support a new direction in my business. All of this I’ve done within WordPress. I love WordPress, by the way. Anyway, as you can guess, I’ve had too much on my plate to keep my personal blog going. Yet, once Healthy WebDesign is complete, I see me getting back to my personal blog as a testing ground for blog ideas.
Here’s what Darren had to say about why personal blogging can be helpful.
- teach you the skills of blogging
- familiarize you with the tools of blogging
- help you work out how much time you have
- help you work out if you can sustain blogging for the long term
- give you a taste of blogging ‘culture'
- help you define a niche
- help you find a readership
Darren explains each point. I think the key for me is just get started blogging. You will learn as you go anyway. So I’d agree with Darren.
I would love to know more about blogging! I tried to load the “canned” blog on my site, but had some problems with password restrictions for users. I spoke at length with my customer support, and found out that even THEY don’t like their own blogging software! LOL! Now I’m looking at the google blogger software, and will try to upload it to my site. I love the blog culture and can’t wait to get it up and running on my http://www.walkweightoff.com/ website!
100YearOld,
My suggestion…Install WordPress on your domain, port your data to WordPress and use one of the thousands of free themes. WordPress is free, powerful, highly extendable and easy to use.
(not to mention, I’m a WordPress evangelist)
And, if you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Hi Dawud,
Thanks for the WordPress advice. I did open an account and start a Blog at WordPress.com. I tried to get the code from WordPress.org and load it on my own website, but unfortunately my site is not compatable, I have a site thru StoresOnLine, and I couldn’t load the software. They suggested getting the WordPress.com blog, open the account, and then use it “externally”, which I did. So this url looks like the blog is on my site: http://www.walkweightoff.com/cybercampsblog but it’s really not, it’s on http://cybercamps.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/welcome-to-spok117s-cybercamps-blog/ if you follow that! So I kind of got what I wanted but not really. I’ve been following all the debate about the nofollow links, and I think I understand that I can’t modify my code on the wordpress.com blog to allow links to follow…. only if I had a wordpress.org and hosted it myself… (I know, I know, I did read your “do you own your website” stuff, but if I waited till I got my act together to do it all, it would be like, never… did I get that right? Oh and thanks again for all those crazy links on my other groovy website
Just reading this blog makes me realise why I don’t blog myself, there’s so much time and effort involved it’s incredible.
Blogging is a fantastic way to reach people and actually connect much better with like minded folk and potential customers.
The downside is you really have to find something that you love to write about because it will take months to build a following before you can start to create products and actually have a proper business model.
Hope you’ve all got loads of content for your blog! I’ve failed numerous times because I’ve chased the money instead of just writing about what I love.
Roy
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