Writer. Contributing Editor at The Discarded Image. Digital Content Strategist. Here's where I publicly explore the books I'm reading, the projects I'm working on, and other current interests. The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
Unintentionally, the first book I read in ’09 was The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. It was New Year’s Day, my husband and I were browsing at a bookstore and having a conversation about Web 2.0 technologies (hey, it’s our thing), and I ended up in an oversized chair for an hour skimming through Arianna and Friends’s basic blogging principles.
And basic is the right word. If you’re brand new to blogging, this book is a goldmine. If you’ve been blogging for more than 6 months and your mom isn’t your only reader, chances are you’ve already figured out most of these principles. But if, say, one of your blogging resolutions this year is to proactively grow your readership or investigate ways of turning your blog into a money maker, you may discover a few helpful pointers. And some of the true stories depicting how NOT to blog are pretty funny — not to mention insightful.
Anyway, the book got me to thinking about all the different reasons us bloggers have for doing what we do, and how that determines WHAT we do. Take me, for example. As a writer, I blog for multiple reasons, including publicizing my books, connecting with other people who care about good books, practicing my craft by writing in multiple genres, and blowing off steam about the frustrations of the writing life. But it can be a tricky thing. Because the majority of what I write is offline, I don’t have a lot of time for writing blog posts — thus you usually hear from me only once or twice a week. More than once I’ve considered dropping my blog to eliminate it as a distraction to “real†writing — but each time I’ve decided to continue simply because I enjoy it so much. Because I write mostly about books, I do have an Amazon Associates account that allows me to make a buck or two when readers purchase a book via one of my links — but because I hate blogs cluttered with ads, I don’t include any on mine and therefore this blog isn’t a source of income (though the need to supplement royalties is very real!). I guess that’s what makes the blogosphere so interesting — that each blog is as unique as the blogger behind it.
So tell me, why specifically do you blog? Do you plan to do more or less blogging this year? Do you have plans to grow or change your blog (and, if so, in what ways)? And if you’ve picked up the HuffPost book, what if anything did you glean from it?
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