Friday, December 02, 2011

My Blogging Experiences and my opinions of blogging


Time passes very fast...in the twinkling of an eye, we usher in the 1st day of December today and before long, it will be a brand new year! I suddenly realise that I have already been blogging for close to 4 years now!
I picked up blogging somewhere in year 2007 but right then I was not very diligent and as a result, my account became somehow inactive. I then decided to give blogging  a try latter on somewhere in year 2008 when at that time, blogging made headwaves in Singapore. I tried it and I liked it and there you have it.. this blog of mine!
I am not totally new to blogging as during my NS days, I kept a diary-I have since thrown these diaries away as I do not want to be caught as a hostage by and of the past- the medium may have change now but the process of sharing one’s own experiences or thoughts with others remains.
Whatever the therapeutic blogging can bring to myself, I am careful that when I share my online diaries with the world now, I have to be sensitive not to hurt other people’ feelings or disclose too much confidential things about myself (whatever bad things you wrote about your colleagues can be easily googleable by them!). Private experiences and thoughts on blogs have become items of mass consumption, distributed to the thousands via search engines, social-bookmarking tools among others.
The early bulk of my blog was built on my experiences with my girlfriend then (who is now my wife) as we travelled to the nooks and crannies of Singapore, visiting little travelled and explored places like Lorong Buangkok where we were chased by a large fierce dog; visiting a supposedly gem of a bookstore in a bookstore in Eunos selling books cheaply; visiting Labrador Park before it was widely promoted with the extension of the MRT line there and there were really many interesting encounters (go on to read my archives in the labels!). As time passes, however I become more and more busy (I should just use the word: busier) with work and with life and hence I blog less on our outings now (anyway most of the places in Singapore have already been explored by us!) and now my blog is actually more generic -covering news, events and a little inkling of my life’s experience.
Exactly a year ago, I was thinking of hosting my own domain for this blog using a paid account and I even spent a month learning how to do that. Looking at my thought now, I feel that it does not really matter whether your blog is professional or not -though it may attract more marketers-as long as it fulfils a win-win situation for both my readers and I.
For my readers, they win if my quality is of interest to them, attractive enough to retain them and have them coming to read my blog everyday or even subscribing to my blog via the many modes available like RSS, Facebook or even Twitter. What’s more, they will win if they learn additional new things of use to them after they read my blog.
For me, I will win as blogging gives me a catharsis to expresss my thoughts, share my experiences, vent my anger and frustration and seek the opinions of others.
To put simply, both readers and I win if through my blogging process, I am able to create or add value to both parties!
With the proliferation of blog awards, I find that the “process” part of blogging has been relegated to the backburner as bloggers seek to win fame (the “destination” aspect). Towards this new normal in blogging, how good a blog is, is no more dependent on the quality of the content of the blog, no more dependent on the value the blog gives to the readers. In the new blogging normal, a good blog is a popular blog -as the common perception goes- and a popular blog is a blog which garners the most readership. In the quest for their blogs to be popular, bloggers outwit, outsmart others to gain traffic by one simple way: to be provocative!
If you are a blogger and you want to attract large amounts of traffic easily and effortlessly without building a good content regularly, very simple, just put up some nice photos of you and be provocative and in no time, you will be famous.
I believe in the blogosphere, there is really a trove of good blogs like mine which gives good value to readers without getting too much traffic. These blogs are humble blogs and one day, once their intrinsic value is discovered and welcomed by others, I believe they will attract lots of traffic! A bit like stocks, right!
Going forward, I look forward to more interaction with you readers- you have all the means available in this blog to contact me and interact with me: blog commenting, email, Facebook, Twitter and a whole lot more.
Hope you enjoy my blog and I hope to hear from you what you think about my blog and how it can be further improved: so drop me an email today!

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