A few of my friends have decided to start blogging, and for some reason, they came to me for a few questions.
After a few years of blogging, I can definitely suggest this route to anyone who has an opinion, and wants to make himself heard. I use my own blog to learn things I need and want to learn, to interact with people and companies I want access to, but most of all to bring some order and focus into the thoughts that run free in my mind.
Besides the technical stuff of creating a new blog, connecting it to all of the relevant social media places and setting up ways to analyze interaction with it; there are a few blogs I think are important for a tech blogger – no matter what the exact topic is.
Here are a few of the blogs I read for that purpose: learning about blogging and keeping up to date with the technology of blogging.
ProBlogger
Anything related to blogging can be found in ProBlogger. Darren Rowse is an Australian who has been part of the blogging about blogging scene for years now, and his site has a lot of resources about it. He covers a wide range of topics with quality guest posters.
Read him for a year or so – and then decide if you want to continue or not. He is still on my RSS list of blogs to read, and there are always useful suggestions to gain from him.
Copyblogger
Copyblogger is another must read resource. Brian Clark heads this domain, where most of the advice you will receive is about writing itself – how to improve your headline, tighten your writing – these kinds of things.
Geek & Poke
If you are into technology, then Geek & Poke should be on your “reading list”. If you are a blogger then doubly so.
Geek & Poke is a comics strip drawn by Olivier Widder. It is short and to the point. For me, it is an inspiration for ideas to write about and a place to get drawings for posts when there’s a fit.
Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine deals with design on the web, and part of it is blogs. For me, this helps because all of my operation online is handled by me – from coding the HTML to arranging for a backup service.
It also serves as a way for me to learn the language spoken by designers – a thing I found useful more than once for multiple projects.
Yoast
Joost de Valk is Yoast, and he is… unique. He is one of the cornerstones of WordPress for me – the ultimate expert out there for WordPress and SEO. His posts are rather technical, but eye opening each time.
Seth Godin
It seems that no list of blogs is complete without Seth Godin in it. Seth writes about marketing and almost every post he writes (and he writes a lot) is a gem on its own right. Blogging requires marketing in so many ways, that I had to include Seth Godin’s blog in this list.
WPMU.org
If you deal with WordPress, then I suggest following WPMU’s blog. In the past year they were able of bringing multiple posts that deal with both technical and non-technical aspects of running a blog. From setting up mailing lists, to reviewing plugins and themes – this is a great resource.
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There are more blogs I follow just to stay up to date about blogging, but I guess the above are the most important ones.