So Ian wanted to know the sorts of things I did around blogging, and the sorts of stuff I regularly talk to other Microsoftees about. Sarah has also asked me for "a day in the life" type blog post. Not easy Sarah, as I'm sure people wont be interested in my day to day stuff, and don't tend to blog about it. But I'll try to blog that in a future post. So to go through the topics one by one...
Starting a blog:
There are loads of blog engines out there, most, if not all of them Blogger, Wordpress, Spaces, Livejournal. Choose the one that suits you, and choose your blog name well.
Be careful about your blog name. BigStud may be a funny and witty blog name, to you and all of your close friends but when you're in an interview for a senior position at a new company, years down the line, you may be horrified to realise they've done their research on you very well.
How to blog effectively:
Decide what you want to talk about. Get a blog "voice". The scatter gun approach, covering every topic you can makes readers wonder what you're all about. If it's a technical blog, choose a few topics and stick to them. You'll get loyal readers who are interested in what you're interested in too.
Blog regularly. Whether that's daily, weekly or monthly, don't let your blog readers think you've stopped blogging, or flood them with 20 posts in a day and then nothing.
Don't blog excessively long posts. It's a blog, not a novel. Use a shorter post to link to the longer article.
Don't amend posts. It annoys people who receive your posts via RSS and receive the whole thing again. If you do amend your post, at least make a comment at the top of the post to say it's been amended.
Don't insult, flame, offend or libel others. It could come back to haunt you in more ways than one
How to increase traffic to your blog:
Register with blog aggregators like Bloglines, Feedblitz and Blogjet to get your blog read by subscribers who don't visit your web directly
Create a profile in Technorati. Each blog post you do will show up there, be searchable and can be linked to.
Link to other bloggers. This creates trackbacks where people reading the blogs you have linked to can find your blog and perhaps subscribe
Be interesting. People won't keep reading your blog if you're dull, whinge a lot, or spend your time ranting at the world and how unfair life is to you.
How to get exposure by the press:
The press want news, controversy, and "something" to make a headline out of. Your cat being sick doesn't fall into this category. Watching stuff like Techmeme and being the first to break a story might give you this break. Warning. you may become completely obsessed with this and spend all your time blogging and watching other feeds in order to "up" your profile. This could consume you like it has a few other bloggers out there. Which leads to..
How not to get fired:
Stay grounded. This is important. The extra exposure can easily go to your head (it's like being catapulted onto the front page of the tabloids, being top of all the search engines and talked about by everyone). Remember you're still the same person (but with a blog). Don't become an EGO. Remember, as Andy Warhol said. Everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame. You can fall into obscurity as fast as you have risen into fame.
Make sure you know your companies blogging policy. People at Apple are amazed about our policy, IBM's runs to 5 pages, ours is 2 words (Blog smart). Don't break the rules.
These are just my current opinions. Perhaps you have other tips you'd like to share...