Monday, July 16, 2012

Do You Wanna Blog?



A friend and I were talking the other day and she said, “I’ve been thinking…maybe I’ll start writing a blog,” to which I promptly responded, ”Yes, you should!”
Should YOU write a blog? Blogging is a great creative outlet and while I’m no authority --the truth is that I currently have no fewer than FOUR blogs lurking out there in cyberspace. I don’t keep them all current, though I’d love to. In fact, I miss writing in them.
I decided to compile a checklist to help you decide if blogging is for you. It is solely based on my opinions. That is the number one beauty of writing your own blog: you control the content so it’s whatever YOU think. Is blogging right for you? It might be!
YOU MIGHT WANT TO START A BLOG IF:
1.   You want a website. It’s probably the cheapest, easiest way to do it. Two services, Blogger and Wordpress, offer most of this to you for free.  
2.   You ENJOY writing. You don’t have to write much. There a tons of blogs out there that are mostly pictures. But the reality is, you have to put content out there on a regular basis for readers/viewers, and this most often requires a bit of writing. Some people LOVE to write. Others hate it and find it a real pain. This is what I’m talking about.
3.   You feel comfortable putting yourself out there. This goes along with # 3. But guess what – you don’t even have to put yourself out there! You can limit who sees your blog. So, for example, only your family might see it. I have a blog like that, where I post family pictures, etc.  
4.   You want to chronicle an important life milestone, or share a skill or passion with others. Maybe you do book reviews, or write about cooking, or sports. A lot of people blog about the birth of a child, or just a particular holiday, etc. .. AND:
5.   You need to find an efficient way to share your words, pictures or other content with a group of people. This is the reason I started my “family” blog. It’s really hard to send a lot of pictures through email.  A lot of them are too big and they take forever to load on some people’s computers. I liked having a website, basically, where my family could go and read and look.
6.   You have some computer skills. Okay, you don’t have to be a programmer or software designer. The free blog sites out there are amazingly easy. But you do need to possess basic computer skills, such as cutting & pasting, formatting fonts (changing the style or size, for example), uploading pictures or other files.


Blogging in Nashville

So, do you think you want to do it? Stay tuned. I’ll have more to say in my next BLOG, when I give some of the reasons you might NOT want to blog.

This picture has nothing to do with blogging, but Toonie asked to be included because he sometimes tries to blog.


4 comments:

  1. What four blogs do you have floating around out there? I can think of one. What are these other secret blogs?

    Another reason to blog--You start paying closer attention to things that otherwise might flit past and be gone from your notice. You read or witness something unusual and you think "Hey! I'll put this on my blog!"

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    Replies
    1. right you are, my little mon-et! if not us, then whom? who will take and make note of these things?

      you have read all of these blogs i mention. i have not yet decided whether to share them with the masses. i just dont know if the world is ready for 'em. ;-)

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  2. are the names of your blogs hidden in that incredibly long list of labels???

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