Tagged | Top Five Reasons I Blog

I have been tagged by Brett Terpstra of Circle Six Design. Which means I get to rant about myself a bit (which is always fun) and then make other people write as well (woohoo).

1. I like to teach

This is the most likely reason that I continue to blog; but it really isn’t the reason that I started blogging. I admittedly started blogging because I wanted recognition. Yes I am a self serving bastard at heart. It seems however that I am embarrassed about it, thus allowing my teaching/helping tendencies to overpower my deep self promoting urges. Most of my articles/posts are instructional in nature, covering seo, coding, design, business, etc.

2. I like to have a place to rant

It doesn’t happen all that often, but when needed it’s nice to have a place to let off steam. This includes talking about weird personal stories or when shitty things happen. Even though it is probably not a frequent method of use - I like the idea of having a “rant stool” in reserve if needed.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Yes, all the web design purists are scoffing at me right now. I know that most people would say that I shouldn’t be concerned about the search engines, or getting inbound links. All I have to do is simply “creating quality content” and it will “all come naturally” — blah blah blah. The truth of the matter is that even though I consider myself a web design/developer first, my business side is always close at hand. In reality if no one comes to a website it is useless, pure and simple. SEO is a large part of all web exposure. Even being able to leverage my site authority is a valuable service for my clients.

4. I am secretly full of myself

Come on, isn’t everyone who has a blog and does promoting at least somewhat full of themselves? We all think that what we say is important enough that everyone should read it, talk about it, link to it, tell their friends, moms, dogs, and pet geckos about it. I check my stats more than I like to admit, and visit technorati to see how many new links I have on a weekly biases. When people tell me they read a post of mine I act shocked and say something pathetic like “Oh wow, I forget people actually read this!” but in my head I am thinking “Woohoo, people take me seriously! Hmmm…..I wonder why?”

5. I am a design-aholic

I constantly want to redesign stuff, and if I couldn’t redesign my blog every 2-3 weeks I probably would redesign my company homepage every 2-3 weeks which as many know is really bad for branding (I am also a hypocrite because I am working on a company redesign and re-branding right now). Client work does help the design-aholic-id-ness but only to an extent. This provides a nice outlet.

Passing the torch

Ok, tag your it:

• Dennis Lembree
• Dan Shields
• Mike Cherim
• Chris Heilmann
• Robert Nyman

« Writing Effective Marketing Copy on the Web The need for inspiring projects »