Lessons I Learned from Blogging (So Far...)

[Meikah Delid]

When I started my first personal blog about five years ago, I felt like I was transported back to my creative-writing class in college. In that class, we were told (as I remembered):

• to be a keen observant of things and happenings
• to appreciate color and texture
• to make use of all our senses
• to think in vivid language

Blogging is a lot like that. You need to be on the lookout, to feel, smell, touch, taste, see, listen.

In fact, with blogging, I think I have become more observant of things, of nature, especially. I'd grab my digicam or phone camera and capture anything that is of interest or may be of interest to other people. I want to be in the moment and to write about it in the next instance.

Blogging has become a habit that is hard to break. It's addicting---at least to me---for I know some people have become tired of it. But for me, it's a sounding board. It's an outlet. It's catharsis.

A year later, I found out that you can actually learn from blogging. You write down your thoughts, or your views about things, and when people read what you've written down, like it, and keep coming back for more, you can earn.

All the more I got interested in blogging. So, I would read other successful blogs, and observe what topics they write about and how they write. I didn't know then about SEO, link building and what have you. I only know that to get traffic to your blog, you visit blogs whose topic is similar to yours and leave intelligent comments. And that to show up in search engines, you must make use of meta tags and keywords. But I learned all about this from my team leader then. We were not that into SEO yet.

I have yet to earn from my personal blogs (my business blogs are all commissioned, anyway), and I know, soon, the ads company will indulge me.

But here's the thing: blogging is not entirely creative writing, not even writing per se. Blog posts of many successful blogs are not good pieces of writing. Most often the title is interesting but when you read the entry, it's empty or lacking, or doesn't even have a connection with the title. Well, to look at it positively, it's like thinking aloud, streaming of thoughts, so anything goes. :D

But for me, I'm happy when I see a blog post written like an essay and written by a successful blogger. When I see one, I get more inspired!

[Duey]

Anyway, my website is http://www.pongpagong.com

[Duey]

Your website is great... I hope you can put my link on your blogroll too just like the others...

[Meikah Delid]

Hi, there! My main personal blog is actually listed on my profile. :) In any case, I talk about my being a working mom whenever I get the time. You got an interesting site yourself. :)

[digitalenvironmentalist]

Well you have said all the ingredients of becoming an effective blogger. Where is your official blogsite? This is mine - My world is getting smaller every day! A collection of all my travel sites and some relevant links as well. Hope you will enjoy browsing and maybe you could write your comment as well.