Why Blog? Because It's There…?

I am constantly amazed at the varied reason that people blog.  Sometimes, it seems, for little reason at all.  Working in a niche market as this blog is aiming to do is entirely at variance with the activities of many of the bloggers I met last night when I paid another visit to the London Bloggers meetup.

Despite the variance in our objectives it was a good example of how our interests coincided. So I suppose there is always an overlap of interests wherever people come together.  It is in exploring those overlaps to discover areas of deeper common interest that the fascination of human interaction lies, that gives meaning to the word 'society'.

Alexa was there again still trying to work out how to transfer her blog from self written code to Wordpress in order to start down the path of monetization without spending all her time coding.

Robin Grant's has some fascinating material on his corporate site about the impact and effectiveness of social media in 'Learn to speak human'.  It is intriguing to see the differences between the approach of the individual online marketer who uses social media as a mechanism to promote a product or service but with a small downside (i.e. their own costs) compared with the absolute necessity to maintain a market position of the large corporate entity that needs to get and stay connected to it's audience.

TiredofLondonTiredofLife.co.uk is a great example of how your domain name can never be too long provided it accurately reflects what you are about – though I suspect this one  may generate more traffic looking for the Samaritans than amusing things to do on a day off.

The author of this whimsy, Tom Jones, was one of those who prompted the opening thought of 'why do people blog'.  He tells me that it is his objective to post every day on his chosen subject but as yet has not yet found an answer to the grand question: 'Why?'.

James Brown at JeddBrown.com and Oscar at asgeir.co.uk both have intriguing sites that show off their technical skills.

The presentation for the evening was by Floyd Earl Smith who was promoting his book on climate change.  Slanted the talk towards how to use your blog as a means towards a book.  Well established non-fiction author who obviously likes the process – unfortunately didn't give us a domain to link to other than referring to a blog he started at http://getgooglevoice.com/.  Sorry about that, Floyd.

And a top-up from Jaz at Jazamatazz who gave us a rundown on Refugee Week which will take place from 15 – 21 June this year.  The Simple Acts Campaign is working to change the way people perceive refugees, and provides a list of 20 simple acts you can do to change your own and other people's perceptions.  Check out some of the events during Refugee Week.

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