[stylist] Info on Sites

[Allison Nastoff]

Hello all,
I am not a writing expert like all of you are since I do so much 
writing for my college classes that I don't have time to write 
anything for publication.  However I would like to disagree with 
the view that blogs are useless.  I have a blog on livejournal.  
It is pretty informal and is mostly rambling about my guide dog 
and my college experiences.  It is definitely true that blogs 
don't get many visitors.  Except for the people who I friended on 
livejournal--which is about 15 people I think, and a few offline 
friends I have mentioned my blog to, I don't think anyone reads 
it.  I will also be the first to admit that since it is self 
published, my quality standards aren't always the highest.
However as bad as blogs are for networking, they are a wonderful 
place to express your thoughts and feelings, which could 
eventually be refined and expressed in a publishable form.
Like I said, besides this blog, the only writing I have done 
lately has been school papers.  However, as a Journalism major 
who might consider being a freelance writer after college, it 
will be a lot of fun to go back through my blog which I am sure 
will be full of ideas for experiences worth writing about in a 
publishable form, like guide dog issues, and advocacy.
So even though I am not an expert, based on my own experience 
with blogs I want to encourage people to write blogs, just for a 
fun creative outlet if nothing else.
Just my opinion.  (smile)
Allison Nastoff

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: "Neil Butters" <neil.butters at sympatico.ca
>To: <stylist at nfbnet.org
>Date sent: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 20:15:44 -0500
>Subject: [stylist] Info on Sites

>Hello All,

>I am a little late with a response to Judith's post concerning 
the usefulness of social networking and blogs.  In my experience, 
blogs are useless for networking.

>I wrote a blog for over a year and averaged maybe 2 or 3 visitors 
a week.  I never received comments.  I didn't get any jobs or 
meet anyone.  I "advertised" the blog on several directories, but 
I don't have a Facebook page, so that was the extent of my 
advertising.  Working against me as well was the topic: 
pharmacology and toxicology (although I wrote it for a general 
audience).

>I think there are very few blog success stories relative to the 
number of blogs.  I think popularity and usefulness are dependent 
on many factors, such as topic, promotion, SEO, etc.

>I also question the usefulness of blogs as writing samples 
because they are self-published, and are therefore not subject to 
critique or the challenges of being good enough for publication.

>Neil


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