So I want a blog.
All of my own. Why on earth do I want to lumber myself with this
ongoing responsibility? I’m not a writer by trade, I’ve got no
agenda I want to push and I am certainly not doing this with a view
to eventually plugging a second rate spin off book (I’m looking at
you, @queen_uk). Still, I want to do a blog and I am the kind of
person who gets an idea, then it niggles away until the idea is put
into action, for better or worse.
So I’ve been
mulling about what to write my blog about for a few weeks. I know
that to encourage readership, maximise opportunities for engagement
and manage expectation of audience, a blog should stick to one topic,
one main area of focus. In case you hadn’t guessed from that
sentence, I am ‘in marketing’. Officianado’s of great comedy
will know Bill Hick’s stance on people ‘in marketing’.
Re-reading the first half of this paragraph I can see his point.
Anyway, I’m a digital marketing specialist, and there is already an
internet full of tech blogs plagiarising Mashable and Econsultancy,
so no point climbing aboard that bandwagon.
What else could I
write about? Music? I love music, but most of my collection wasn’t
even recorded this century (specialist area, early to mid 90’s
grunge scene), so it’s not like I’ll be keeping people up to date
with the latest dubstep anthems or uncovering hot new musical talent.
I'll leave that to Zane Lowe to get sycophantically over excited
about.
Film then. Big fan
of films, love going to the cinema, have a subscription to Empire and
a decent home collection of DVD and Blurays, plus a Blockbuster
online account with a watched list nearly in 4 figures. Fair bet
there will be the odd film review posted on here, plus childlike
anticipation of each quarters new crop of celluloid thrills. Will
this give me enough fodder to keep a whole Blog going all on its own
though?
I could go down the
route of being a bit saucy, blog on sex and relationships, maybe be
flirty and a bit ambiguous about my sexuality. That kind of behaviour
is best left to young Hollywood ingénue, desperate to carve their
mark on cinema beyond topless murder victim #3 in a cheap
horror sequel. It seems their only avenue for career advancement is
to appear to be as sexually accessible by as many people as possible,
especially their current interviewer. Regardless of that, I would
desperately underqualified to write about sex on the internet, there
are images of illicit behaviour on certain websites (so I hear) that
will widen eyes more experienced than mine.
After some
pondering, I came to the conclusion that, all things considered, I
was best off just blogging about whatever the hell I feel like,
whenever the mood takes me to post. And, to answer the question first
posed, the reason for Blogging need be no more complex than the fact
I enjoy writing. So there it is, I think. This is what the internet,
possibly the world’s greatest invention, has come to. A massive
compendium of small vanity projects from people like me, with a
little bit too much spare time. But at least whilst I am on here,
blogging about nothing very much, I am not sloganeering a new
cringe-worthy marketing tagline.
You see what Jon’s
doing there? That’s clever. He’s going for that ‘at least I'm
not marketing to you’ dollar. That's a big market, good work, Jon.
