56 Access :: Future
Most blogs display a certain amount of self-interest. Some blogs promote a social or political agenda. Other blogs are designed to promote a product or service. What you will notice is that, in all successful blogs, there's something in it for the author. At the same time, there does need to be some altruistic purpose, some element of the blog that exists not to serve the author's interests but rather to serve the readers' interests. For, after all, if the reader gets nothing out of the blog, why would they read it? Write out the purpose of your blog. This will be the core of your blog's About page. This should be the first page you write, and easily accessible from every page on your blog. Content What are you going to write about? If you are not clear about what to write about, then your blog will be forever a blank page staring at you, challenging you to be creative, but resisting form or definition. Many people start a blog thinking that they will simply write about whatever is important to them, and then after weeks of non-activity, find that nothing is so important that it deserves to be written. OLDaily, for example, focuses very clearly not only on the topic area of interest - online learning - but also on the type of content that will be covered: "it reflects a rising trend, it describes a new approach to online learning, it recenters our thinking. Only items which look forward are included in OLDaily." What are you going to write about? The best answer to this question is found in the question: what do you read? Check your bookmarks (if you don't have bookmarks, start bookmarking things that you have read and enjoyed). What's on your bookshelf? Make a list (no, really, make a list). What do you listen to, what do you watch on television, what types of movies to you watch, what do you talk about when you're with friends? Collect all of this information and organize it - find not only the topic of the material, but also the type of material. When I look at my bookshelf, I find not only philosophy and programming texts but also a lot of science fiction, some political writing, historical non-fiction and essays on the mind. My bookmarks, meanwhile, reveal more technology sites and (not surprisingly) quite a few education technology and elearning sites. Is it any wonder that my focus is, not merely on learning, but on the future of learning with technology? The point here is that it is better not to focus on some specific topic, the way a university course does, but rather, to aim at some sort of intersection that touches on all of your interests. Anybody can write about e-learning, but only you can write about themes found in e-learning, romance fiction and skydiving. What would that look like? I haven't a clue - that's why I would need to ready your blog. Don't just pick something and say "I'm going to write about that." Study yourself, and write about the things you're already thinking about.