Blogging Advice

Stephen Downes writes a guide for bloggers who want to be heard, for those who want to be on the popular side of the bloggosphere. Even those who don't really wanna be heard or become popular :-) should take a look. He gives pretty good advice. He urges would-be bloggers to plan ahead, keep informed of what's out there, write with a purpose in mind, write often, use simple design (light colors, big sans serif fonts), and publicize by suscribing to other blogs, using pings and trackbacks, suscribing to lists, suscribing to aggregators, emailing other bloggers, commenting on other blogs... His best advice is to write often, to write a lot, to blog about everything that comes to mind. You can't become a good writer unless you write, right?

He thinks of blogs as socially relevant, professionally engaging, etc. He disregards those that blog out of narcisism (most of us) rather than to have their ideas heard out in the world and make a differnce. He disregards the common bloggers who write for their friends and the friends of friends, those who just replaced the adolescent journal or notebook of verbal diarrhea with the technologically commentable code. However, those bloggers could also profit from his advice. So, those of you blogging out there, go ahead and read his article. Those who are not blogging, what's wrong with you? Start your blog!