My first year as a blogger

On 31 March 2009 I posted my first blog. Throughout that time, I have posted regularly on many subjects including technology, social media, atheism, politics, current affairs and animal welfare to name a few.

Before setting up my own blog I used to write and comment on forums, web sites and other people's blogs, but never thought of actually setting up my own blog where I could write in more detail on specific subjects that interested me. After some encouragement from a friend, I came to the conclusion that setting up my own blog was a good idea.

I didn't want to spend time and expense setting up my own blog, but wanted to use one of the freely available blogging tools. After some research, I decided to use Blogger.

Why I chose Blogger as my blogging tool

• It is a very popular blogging tool, so must be doing something right
• Developed by Google it would have good search capability
• Easy to use, configure and maintain
• Free with no running costs

Once I had set up my blog, it was then a matter of thinking of what to write. Thankfully, this is rarely a problem. I get ideas for my blog from all matter of different sources.

Inspiration for my blogs

• Traditional news media including newspapers and the TV
• IT media including forums and magazines
• Blogs, forums, social media and various web sites
• Conversations with people

Basically, an idea for a blog can come from almost anywhere. I don't have any need to go looking for ideas, as they usually come to me. What I will do though is write an idea down. I keep a list of blog ideas saved on my computer, so that a good idea does not get forgotten about.

My reasons for blogging

• Using my blog as a learning aid to force me to learn something
• Expressing my opinions on issues that I care about
• To connect with people and share different opinions and ideas
• I love the democratic principle that having a blog gives you - a blog gives you a voice!

I enjoy it when someone has read one of my blogs and leaves a comment, either agreeing or disagreeing with what I have written. I enjoy being challenged over an opinion I have expressed in a blog, as I see this as an opportunity for me to have a discussion over the subject.

I hope to continue blogging, as it is something that gives me pleasure and I enjoy. Hopefully, it gives my readers pleasure when they read my posts!

A word of caution using third party social media tools

Third party social media tools can be a double edged sword. On the one hand they get you up and running quickly, with little or zero up front expenses, and little if any technical knowledge. On the other hand, you are placing your content in the hands of a third party supplier without the benefit of a contract to safe guard yourself.

Google's blogging tool Blogger (used by me on this very blog) recently closed down several music sites without warning, and thus not giving the user any time to backup their blog. All the blogs that Google closed were operating legitimately under Blogger's own Terms and Conditions.

Google is not alone in closing down sites in this way. Yahoo closed down its photo hosting service back in July 2007, giving its users only three months to claim their photos before Yahoo purged the site.

While these sorts of actions may be rare, they still cause a great deal of frustration and inconvenience when they do. So it is worth asking yourself the question "How would I recreate my online social media presence if my social media supplier withdrew its services?"

Whether you host your own social media applications or not, your social media content should be backed up. In the event of a disaster, you should be able to recover your content back to its previous state, whether you do this using the original social media tool or not.

If you are using the Google Blogger tool (like I do), then you can export your blog directly from within the blog editor (once logged in, go to Settings and the option for exporting your blog is at the top). Most blog editors will have a similar feature.

Also, you can save the raw XML feed from your blog. To save the latest 1000 feeds for my own blog I would need to enter http://www.domburf.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000 into my browser.

So it's worth investigating what facilities your social media tool has for allowing you to backup your content.

And don't delay, do it today!