There seem to be plenty of sites around and about on “How to blog”; talking about what a blog should and shouldn’t be, how to attract readers, and so on… Some go so far as to compare a blog to a newspaper – “You must post every day”!
For me, this ‘blog’ has always been about me keeping a record of my own thoughts and events, primarily for my benefit, although those who know me may be interested, I guess. I don’t think this is selfish – I don’t have the time or energy to maintain a “public service” or “journalistic” blog, and let’s face it, most of them out there don’t fall into this category anyway. It’s just an online journal, where I can throw thoughts, snippets, and links that I think are worth storing – or that I think one day might be interesting historically. Perhaps it’s a bit like therapy? The other key component is keeping my skills current; although this probably encapsulates the website as a whole. Stuff like working out how to generate an XML feed, how to put on GeoURL data, making it all XHTML compliant…
I think the whole thing of regular publishing is greatly undermined by the RSS magic. I can pull up my live bookmark and see at a glance if any of my friends’ blogs have got new entries.. I don’t actually need to go to their sites at all (except to read them!). I would like a most sophisticated aggregator, but am still waiting….
Perhaps people do start blogs with an aim to being The Most Popular Blog ever, but not I.