Personal Blogging

Many of us keep personal diaries of events that have occured over the last few weeks, months, years, even a lifetime. With the emergence of the Internet and the great opportunities for reaching a wide and interested audience, many are now keeping these records online. There are 1,668,870,408 Internet users in the World; your audience. To have but one subscriber wanting to read your online diary on a regular basis gives one great satisfaction and a feeling of purpose. I believe that this is the attraction of personal blogging.



The online diary, which we call weblog, often goes well beyond the boundaries of simple communication. There are gripping articles and lots of interactive features that create an entertaining environment for any Internet user. Many brilliant writers began by keeping weblogs, records of personal thought, comments and ideas. Personal blogs allow a limitless space for expression of opinion and a clear record of ones development.

Personal blogging comes with caution as certain aspects of ones personal life can be detremental to other goals you may have set yourself, such as business success. Much caution now goes with MySpace pages and Facebook pages; what better way for a company to see the 'true' individual they may be hiring? It is sensible from the outset to keep personal and business blogging separate and to follow a few simple rules to ensure your personal blog is successful.

The first thing you need to put effort into is the topic of the articles you post; they are responsible for the overall image of the blog. There are many poor personal blogs, with uninteresting work and poor grammar and spelling. Please bear in mind that anybody with Internet access can view your blog and so you have a responsibility to self-censoring. This is for your benefit as well as others and unfortunately there have been cases of stalking and even stolen identity. Also remember that blogs are interactive; do not write about aspects of your life to which other peoples comments could hurt your feelings.

As long as you monitor your writing and others comments and adhere to your own self-censoring policy the outlook for your blog should be bright. When you write a personal blog you must consider its affect on your family and your friends. Do not fall into the trap of believing a weblog is a private, secretive place where you can store your opinions and thoughts. Your thoughts can have great power when you publish them to the World, but with great power comes great responsibility.

Next Time: Business Blogging