#BlogBuilding

Last updated on 2020/01/24

The next category to tackle: Blog Building. Many of the categories that I am creating have a specific goal in mind. For this category the goal is all around building this blog and building my knowledge about web technology. One suggestion I have for anyone wanting to create a presence online is to try and figure out what your goals are for what you are creating. To me, the following targets are all related to this goal of blog building and knowledge building. Remember, these are my current goals as of September 2019 and I fully reserve the right to change, modify, or scrap them altogether in the future.

I am not trying to build the best blog ever. If this were the goal the a simple search for “blog best practices” would be my starting point. While some of my efforts here are aligned with some of the best practices for blogs, they are coincidental overlaps. This is my space and my effort. The ultimate goal here is to make myself happy and so far I am achieve that goal with flying colors. This is fun.

I am not trying to drive an online conversation. Many blogs and pretty much every online space has comment sections and feedback. Social media integration and visibility is a huge part of blogging best practices. Right now I want to learn about this space in my own little bunker with a moat around it. Sure – this creates a risk that I am missing out on other viewpoints and possibly new feedback and technology that would make this better. On the flip side I don’t have to moderate comments, people, or worry about the outside world. This is not an approach I would recommend for product development, but it works great for my current goals.

I am not trying to make money. But… but… I see amazon affiliate links on the blog already! Sure – I am not going to turn down any of that sweet internet cheddar that might come my way. The answer as to why I have already set up an Amazon affiliate account and created some affiliate links is simple – I am curious. I wanted to know how that works. In fact – this entire blog post is being created so that I can talk about those affiliate links. I have set a personal requirement that I can’t create posts about a category until I have defined that category. Therefore, define the category then I can talk about how I set up the affiliate links and what I learned there. Does this mean there won’t be ads on the blog? Nope – ads are everywhere and I really want to learn how they work. I can commit to not turning this blog into a neon-drenched vegas-strip style blog with ads everywhere as those types of sites are horrible to look at, but I have already started collecting links to see where I can start, including this starting point around advertising on the blog without selling out.

I do want to get better at writing. This is one area where my goals and blog best practices overlap. I had this one pegged before I started writing the first word for this site and before doing any research. However, it is very fulfilling to find out that they way you are doing things lines up with existing best practices. In researching other topics I found the following quote that I will be attempting to follow in order to achieve this goal.

“pick a schedule you can live with, and stick to it. Until you do that, none of the other advice I could give you will matter”

Coding Horror: How To Achieve Ultimate Blog Success In One Easy Step

I am not focused on visiliby. Yet. One of the things about learning about this space is around SEO, driving traffic, and leads. At some point in the future I want to explore this and that will necessitate trying to drive some traffic. I want to create some experiments on here and try and document the results. I am also a data junkie and even though nobody in the world besides me knows about this site I have checked the google analytics site every single day since I set that up because I like seeing how many times I am checking the site each day. I am really looking forward to exploring this topic.

I want to create a presence and I do want to give back. Right now I have a very low social media presence. I don’t have an Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, or Reddit account. I know that there are dozens of sites that I could list here. I haven’t posted an update to Facebook in many years. I am a lurker on LinkedIn with a post count of 0. The goal here is not to build a social media presence, however, it is to build a presence and there may be some social media aspects to this. If I can write about my experiences and even one upcoming Engineer can read them and find any wisdom in these words, even if it is what not to do, then I will call this effort successful.

I am also at a point in my life and career that I am slowly realizing that my presence to the outside world is nearly a black hole when it comes to who I am and what I believe in. A number of years ago I was exploring new work opportunities and got a piece of feedback from a hiring manager. They stated that honestly, they weren’t very impressed at all with my resume. Luckily, for some reason they took the time to go check out information on the products that I had lead the effort to create and that those products were very impressive. This has stuck with me over the years. I hate resumes and can’t wait to write posts about how much I loathe 1-2 pieces of paper that is somehow supposed to convey the context of who I am as a person, teammate, and employee and all of the value I can contribute to an organization both directly and indirectly? How are we still sticking to this crappy practice of sorting people based on how effective they are at putting words on a single sheet of paper? The creation of a presence showing who I am to the world beyond a simple resume is a very personal goal that I have.

Finally, I want to have fun. This is one of the most important points to make here. If you are doing something for yourself and you are not enjoying it, then why are you doing it? To me, learning is fun and this blog is all about learning new things.