Good Morning one and all! I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it can be to sit down each day and try to write something coherent. Like a newspaper it’s often impossible to always write something that is interesting to everyone who picks it up. Newspapers, bloggers, and anyone working on a regular schedule have to mix it up. By jumping across a bunch of subjects your hope is that you will hit something interesting to different segments of those folks that drop by. It gets even more challenging if you actually write 3 blogs! – Prepare for a blog about blogging. . . .

Blogging has become the voice of the web over the last couple years. The web is slowly pushing print and even broadcast television off to the sides of today’s media. I can still remember when it was assumed that only nerds and geeks had blogs. These days every journal, magazine and news network worth their salt has a blog if not a multitude of blogs. It’s really not surprising that a “blog” is just as likely if not more likely to be the way people come into a website. Suddenly the home page is relegated to the backwaters of the site. Readers tend to skip all the welcoming blather of a homepage to get right to the most up to date content, then move from there right on to the subjects they are interested. The poor “homepage” often just get’s in the way.

For the publisher blogging builds a new connection with readers. It’s more personal, and maybe more important it’s there when the READER wants it. Even the readers have figured out how to use blogs to their own advantage. Often they use comments to reach into the pool and bring readers back over to their sites through links, or to promote their own ideas and opinions. Personally I’m not real fond of this. The comment sections should really continue a conversation, not become a Laundromat bulletin board.

Now the thing about successful blogs is that they need to be in constant change. There always has to be something new. (Well, almost always). Suddenly there is a new demand for writers out there. Coming up with fresh new content is not a simple task. Now as I’ve said, I have 3 blogs. Quixotica is my baby of course and really my personal place. That’s why it’s “quixotic”, It’s usually about paddling but my weird mind goes all over the place! The other 2 are regional and tourism related. Luckily they are not updated daily (YET) which make them a bit simpler to manage. However I’m getting a feeling they are going to be demanding more time as well. In the last month or so I’ve started to receive feedback on those blogs that hint to more work in the future. Often it’s email from companies or attractions that want to be featured there. In addition I’ve started to get invitations to local press conferences, open houses, and other events seemingly out of nowhere. Honestly I’ve not figured out how I want to react to that stuff. I don’t seem to have enough hours in the day now, without starting to prance out to every little local event!

Sometime in the next few days I’ll write a bit about the ways I spur my old brain to come up with something to write about each day. Not sure you all will find it of value, but I know there are some other bloggers out there so maybe it’s worth the space. 