Of Blogging… and About it!

This post is primarily for the benefit of “non-bloggers” (those who WANT to get into blogging!) as well as to share some good Blogging Resources with fellow-bloggers — I know, “It’s a jungle out there!”

I have been flirting with the idea of starting a community blog for some time now. I spoke to a couple of friends about it and realized that community blogging is actually very beneficial if there is a pre-determined focus and something that sets you apart from the other community blogs. Duplicating content is no big-deal unless it is backed up with analysis which is real and useful — which again is a relative term. The exception is if a group of people want to “mutually” share content and information for themselves and within themselves and the goal is not to generate traffic and (perhaps!) revenue!

Anyway, while we’re on this, for those of you who want to “start” a blog and are in a dilemma about which one of the free Blog Services to use (WordPress or Blogger or Live Journal), I found this article pretty informative. Bottom-line (& Personal opinion!), WordPress wins hands down. There are a lot of little services that WP provides over Blogger which eventually end up making a BIG difference depending on what your blogging needs are. The Blog Stats feature in WordPress blew me off my feet.. (Not exaggerating!)

If there was one thing I wish WordPress had, it would be if I was allowed to use Google Analytics code on my page. Anyway, no issues! (Not like I have truckloads of traffic to analyze anyway!) 🙂

There are 2 links that are worth mentioning here:

• http://performancing.com/
• http://www.problogger.net/

There are tons (literally!) of “Blogging Tips” sites around, but I liked these two particularly. I remember when I was trying to add RSS feeds and syndication buttons to my blog, I could get some tips from ProBlogger which really helped.

Another little change I have made about “how” I Blog is that I have started using a Blog Publishing Tool — Windows Live Writer (Thanks KK again for recommending it — I’m lovin’ it!). It is an amazing tool and very easy to use and configure. The biggest advantage of using a Blog-editing tool is that it helps you avoid the online editors which are usually pretty slow. I have noticed this in case of both WordPress as well as Blogspot. And all this, without compromising on anything! Brilliant!

So much about blogging.. the end should be about it too! — I recently came across this survey of Blogging in India conducted by Windows Live.

Adding to the post, Blogs: Then and Now – a Presentation on The Wall Street Journal website about The Evolution of Blogging and its changing impact on society.