12.28.09 - what the blog?!

a gift from my mother-in-law. it has a ball in it that lights up too.

Gary S Chapman tweeted recently a quote that he read in Collide Magazine.

"Use social media because you have something to say, not because you want to be heard."

When I met with Stanley Leary this past summer and we were talking about blogging and push/pull marketing, he said that a blog had to offer people something for people to keep coming back.

Michael Hyatt, whose blog I just started reading wrote a blog entitled "Do you make these 10 mistakes when you blog?" Lets just say if this was a pop quiz... I'd fail. You can see the cached version here since his site is under construction for the new year.

But I've been chewing on all of this, I redesigned the layout of the blog because I want to be a better blogger.

I'm not sure this is at all what Rick Rohlin, the pastor of the church I work at, had in mind when he asked me to start a blog, but this is the result of "Hey Jim, why don't you start a blog."

The only blogs I ever looked at before starting this blog were photography blogs. I guess I did read real live preacher before I was into photography blogs though. The other blogs I've done in the past both had to do with photography. Well over half the blogs I read are photography blogs.
(If you're an avid blog reader check out bloglines, I just set up an account yesterday and am loving it.)

The new layout visually sets it up to be a photography blog. But although a lot of the posts have had to do with photography, it can't be constrained to JUST that. Good blogging would force me to have a separate blog for photography and another blog for everything else, whatever everything else is. Not happening.

So do I blog because I have something to say or because I want to be heard? Google analytics says I had 1472 visits in the past 30 days. 548 of those visits were absolutely unique visits. So I guess people are reading. But that doesn't tell me why I'm writing.

If you're a regular on my blog, what do I offer you that you keep coming back? What are you coming here to see? What do you want to see more of in the future? And if you had to sum up the three things we write/post about what would those be?
(yes WE my wife did post for the first time this month, probably the best post on the whole blog)

Leave your thoughts in the comment section. If you're having problems leaving a comment try using a different internet browser, I know for a fact that firefox has problems with it. If you're a mac user download camino. Its made by mozilla FOR mac.

I don't think I'm ever going to be a good blogger. ;) This was WAY over 500 words.

JIM baker