Much of this post is a repackaging if not regurgitation of prior posts done, but for those of us not as smart as this guy (who I just read a section about in the book "SuperFreakonomics") or some other genius type, repetition maybe ain't such a bad thing.
With that said, I wanted to look in this post at my blog writing as a whole and where I've been and why I've visited said place...
At the end of November I did a post on topics covered over the last year and a half and followed that up with a few additional posts looking back on stuff written. This included first one and then another post on some of the best magazine writing I've linked to and then got into the quite large category of... business.
First I looked for the business topics most posted on and linked to and came up with those below...
- Touch-screen technology
- Cloud Computing
- Workplace Culture
- Customer Service
- Social Media
In this business topic listing post I also summarized content around touch-screen technology and then revisited Social Media links with this post.
As for future blog writing I'll do... between posts about the other business topics, more "best writing" posts, additional books and magazine articles I'll read, and stuff I'll find on the worldly wide interwebnet of superhighway info... I think I'll continue to have as much to write about & link to as I can carve out the time for.
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If all of this above is the "where I've been", I suppose that means it's time to address the "why I've visited said place"...
The "wherefore the blog" section at the top of my blog was written over a year ago, but hasn't really changed. To whit... "The point is to write about stuff I find... well, interesting. If these efforts should help me transition from my current business program management type job to a business writing and creative type job then all the better. If not, then the original point of the blog holds true."
Starting with this baseline idea of writing about interesting things, two more tangible type aspirations then follow. The first would be to develop a significant (however I decide to define that) blog following & second to move towards work with a writing component to it.
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Around the significant blog following idea... I think just as the baseline goal of the blog is to write about interesting things (you know, interesting to me), the baseline cause of a significant blog following would have to be to first write an interesting blog about interesting things (not rocket science me thinks).
Beyond that, I do think there's things to consider and do in the following areas that might help develop a readership:
- Specific blog topic: One thing about this blog is that even though I've worked to figure out what I've written (perhaps ad nauseam as above illustrates), there's still a good number of things I write about and link to and not a lot of what I'll call "verticality."
In many ways, I envy someone like my friend Jim who wrote a blog on circumnavigating Australia with his two year old son. Specific topic, defined timeframe, well written and... lots of readers. Another example of this was the blog referenced in the movie "Julie & Julia"... with the blog being noted in this Wikipedia link (and I'm SURE it must to true to be written on the Internet) as being the first blog to be made into a movie. In terms of just blog readership, though, I imagine it grew in part because of a specific topic that would appeal to like-minded people who came across Julie Powell's blog about cooking through the recipes of Julia Child.
- Right place to host blog: Is Blogger the best place or is a change in order? I already own the URL I would want to use (same as my blog now, but without the "blogspot"), but I'd then have to decide between services like TypePad, WordPress, or something else (I notice the "Julie & Julia blog" was on Salon).
- Commenting on other blogs: I completely get that this is an excellent way to build readership, but two things have curtailed my blog surfing/searching/commenting to date. One is the lack of verticality (there's that word again) in my own blog and one is when given a choice between doing a surf/search for places to comment and actually creating blog content, I've almost always fallen on the side of content creation. Drat that job and life thing curtailing my available hours...
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In terms of the second aspiration (again, beyond the baseline "write about stuff I find interesting"), having a career with a writing component would be just... nifty. I've done enough writing over the last year and a half to know that I don't feel drawn towards truly creative or fiction writing, but it's then a question of what non-fiction writing could be done.
I do have the business background and MBA (in Sports Marketing which I now use not at all for work) and as the blog topics noted above show, do find business to be interesting... definitely not all business areas, but... some.
So, it stands to reason that I could write within interesting areas of business and my completely conjecture-based notion is there's a need for solid writing in the business world.
I think this is becoming more of a need than ever with new forms of Social Media (as previously posted on) becoming prevalent both as a method of person to person and more to the point here, business to person communication. Additionally, there's new and interesting fields like Entrepreneurial Journalism (which I understand considers different forms media will take going forward) out there.
Now, figuring out exactly to transition from my "like to write stuff" into working and writing in an area that I "like to write about"... therein lies the interesting question.
