Be Known - Be Heard - Be a Blogger

Anyone who has something to say should have a blog. It is the best way to be known. It is the best way to build an audience for your opinions, your writing, your crafts or your business. Or you could just use one to be silly. The world needs more silly.

If you love knitting, you should have a blog to share your knitting wisdom, or your knitting frustrations. If you love the stock market, you should have a blog to share your special thoughts about investing strategy. If you sell puppy food, you should have a blog about the joys of puppies. If you love (or even hate) politics, you should have a blog. If you love (or even hate) celebrities, you should have a blog.

So many people want desperately to be heard, to be known by an audience larger then their immediate families and blogging is the easiest and most effective way to do that.

So why don't these people have blogs? They are frightened by both the notion of having to set one up and the notion of what to say on one once it is set up. Both of those fears are easily overcome. Really. I have taught complete technophobes how to set one up. It is really a simple step by step procedure and if someone is taking you by the hand through those steps it is like learning to breathe.

And as for writing blog posts, there are some really, really simple exercises you can do that will make writing easy, quick and fun. Even coming up with ideas can be fun. Really. I used to be so frightened of "Writer's Block" that it froze me in my tracks. Ironic, but it is true. Being stuck by a fear of being stuck. Now I write several blog posts a week, work on fiction and business writing, write sales copy for clients and am writing a novel. Once you get the hang of it, it really is easy.

One good example is what Julia Cameron calls the Morning Pages - write stream-of-consciousness for ten or fifteen minutes every morning. Don't worry about it meaning anything, don't worry about judging it, just let whatever is in your mind out onto the paper, even if all that is there is "I have nothing to write." You will be amazed that, after a few days of this, great stuff starts appearing on your paper. And if you can do this every morning, you can write blog posts several times a week.

So be known. Be heard. Be a blogger.

Geoff Hoff is a best selling author and has been blogging since since about 2006. He teaches creative writing and blogging courses on the Internet. You can listen to the recording of a free teleseminar he gave on blogging by going here: Why Start a Blog