I realize it has been almost 5 months since I wrote the last article on this blog. I also realize that it is not that easy to regularly write articles and that might be reason I haven't followed up until now. Finally I have come to the conclusion that despite all of that I should continue writing articles and do so more often for the following reasons:
First, in the plethora of RSS-feeds and podcast I regularly listen to entrepreneurs emphasize how important good writing skills are, especially being able to write concisely. "Hire good writers", says 37 Signals in their book Getting Real because good writing skills will pay off. Or like the English proverb goes: "The quill is mightier than the sword". And it is only by writing that you will get better at writing. So writing regularly on your blog makes a good practice.
A big advantage of writing on your blog is that you practice the entire writing process. You will do drafting, revising and fine-tuning before you publish your post. Why? Because virtually everyone might read the stuff you put on your blog. And if you go through the pain of keeping a blog it must be way better than any Twitter micro-content. Otherwise your blog wouldn't have the right to exist. It's almost the same phenomenon as with open source software where programmers pay attention to good design and style for similar reasons.
Second, by writing a blog you are effectively creating a personal brand. Your blog becomes a showcase of you and your work. At the same time, however, you can leverage your blog for marketing your internet products. That can be a of real advantage if you need to push your internet site's traffic and ranking. It's like free SEO and advertisements together.
Lastly, I think that reviewing your old blog entries is real fun. Reading that one or two year old text that you ones wrote makes you kinda proud. In the end you're doing it for yourself so that writing a blog still makes sense if you don't have an audience.
For all of above reasons I have decided to create this blog entry and continue adding more in the future. Surely I yet have to learn how to write concisely because this text could probably be half the size. I should practice more. But for now I'm going with Mark Twain's excuse: "I didn't have the time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
