Being relatively new to blogging I found this interview conducted by Rebecca's Pocket to be particularly informing as to how blogging started and why people blog. I had originally thought that blogging was a relatively new practice. How wrong I am it has been around for a good 8+ years so far. I did not know that blogging was started very early when the internet was first starting up. It didn't occur to me that computer experts had been publishing their own blogs and really having their own internet communities. Like the interviewee I had often wondered what the point of blogging is. Why would anyone want to read what some random person has to say about anything? I found out that it is often experts in the field publishing widely acclaimed blogs. People often publish blogs related to subjects on which they have a particular interest or specialty in. This interview also gave me some very general guidelines for being a good blogger.
Trine-Maria the interviewee stresses that you should be yourself and have a natural way of writing in order, to attract and keep readers. Blogging can make you money too but not in the traditional web-based way with advertisements. It basically gets your name out there and if you are writing a blog on something that you are an expert on people will contact you because they want you to work for them. I found this particularly interesting because it hadn’t occurred to me that a blog could be a type of online resume. She finds that humanization is a very important aspect of blogging. You can turn a very robotic company that only has press-releases and boring professional web-pages into a very human company by having a company blog in which people are allowed to discuss naturally about their work.
Reading this interview has been very helpful for increasing my understanding and awareness as to the reasons why people blog. I learned that although blogging can be a very successful practice one has to go about it in the correct way. You have to put in the time to make you blog well written as well as giving it personality and a human voice.
Nice post. The point about people blogging to "get your name out there" is an important one. These days, journalists in particular are expected to blog and I have known plenty of people who have gotten freelance writing jobs on the basis of a blog post (or two).
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