My first guest blog post was published last week, complete with an error on my part that was immediately called out in the comments. 😳 I was writing about Captain James T. Kirk and the Star Trek series. Somehow, with “James” on my mind, I credited a “James Roddenberry” as the creator of the series! Obviously that was wrong, it was Gene Roddenberry.
The post was updated, and I addressed my error by responded to the comment…
Part one, titled, “Business Intelligence Lessons From Star Trek” is out now. Part two will be out in a week or two. Please check it out!
I’m willing to bet that over half of my blog readers know what the “T” stands for in James T. Kirk… before googling the result. 😉
I’ve been asked to provide some blog material for another site called The Decision Factor. I’m get to be a guest blogger! My first post for that site will be published soon, and it’s titled “Business Intelligence Lessons From Star Trek.” You know you’ll want to read it, and it won’t be published here. My guest blog posts for that site won’t be the technical solutions I often publish here, but instead will be more high-level conceptual business intelligence topics. They won’t feature any specific product or solution, whether from SAP or otherwise.
My posts will be tagged as part of the “BI 101” series. The first post in that series is out now, and was written by Christine Mykota. It’s titled, “Turbocharge Your Career with Intelligent Business Intelligence.” It’s worth a read, even if she doesn’t mention Captain Kirk… 😉
In part one of this series (What Does It Take To Become A Blogger?) I talked about what it takes to become a blogger by answering the “Five W’s” of reporting. In part two (Blogging for Dollars? Or Something Else?) I went a bit further into depth on reasons for blogging, how much money you should expect to make (or not make), and covered some of the financial costs of running a blog. In part three I want to talk about what happens after you start blogging. The worst possible case is that you put yourself out there and nobody notices. Let’s assume that’s not going to happen. 🙂
Content Is King
I talked previously about setting up a posting schedule and sticking to it. This becomes the “pulse” of your blog and I think it’s one of the most important attributes of your new online presence (call it brand or whatever else you like). I tend to post mostly technical articles that are designed to solve a specific problem. That’s what I do in real life (solve problems, or at least attempt to do so). That makes it easy for me to carry that over into my blog life. (Hopefully solving more than I cause. ;)) That being said, what if I don’t have any blog posts ready to go for a particular month? Do I make up some fluff in order to maintain my self-imposed posting schedule, or do I just skip a month? Maybe I should just post a movie review or talk about my latest technical toy that I have purchased to fill in the gaps?
Or perhaps not…
Continue reading “Exposing Yourself To The Internet”
In Part I of this post I talked a little bit about what I think it takes to get started in the world of blogging. In this post I would like to talk more about some of the challenges related to running your own blog. To that end I would like to answer a few questions that people have asked me, and perhaps one or two that people have not asked but maybe should have. Continue reading “Blogging For Dollars? Or Something Else?”
I’ve had a number of folks ask me over the years what it takes to be a blogger. I’m going to start with Who, What, Where, When, and Why, the five “W” questions. I will answer them in the context of being a blogger, and in doing so I hope to give you some items to consider related to opening a blog of your own. That’s the answer to the “who” question already, it’s you. 🙂 With the “who” question answered, I will move on to the “what” question next.
What do I blog about?
The first and most obvious requirement is that you should have something that you want to talk about. Notice that I didn’t say you needed to have something that other folks want to hear. 😉 That’s really all there is to it. Pick a subject that you like and start researching and writing about it.
That being said, here is my first bit of advice: make your blog specific to a single topic. You might be interested in Beanie Babies, Indy car racing, European black metal bands, and vegetarianism. It’s going to be very unlikely that you will find a large audience that has all of those same interests! If you try to maintain one blog that crosses all four subjects, the odds are that a visitor is only going to be interested in about 25% of what you have to say. It is for that reason I have five different blogs, each on a different subject that I’m interested in. Some of them get more attention than others, and that’s okay. I talk more about posting frequency below. Continue reading “What Does It Take To Become A Blogger?”
