your personal blog

There are 2 things a personal blog can do for you .... er ....actually only 1, cause the 2nd I thought about was to leave you how you are, i.e. unnoticed - which is not actually acting upon yourself.

The 1st one is to make your voice, opinions, ideas, comments, protests known. And if they are really good, depending on the audience, you'll be more marketable, you will gain respect from the community and (this is the thing I hope) the mere writing will teach you how to write well - you are no longer writing for yourself you see, but for a wider audience.

So there are a couple of things you need to figure out when you start a blog:

• the URL: despite what you are thinking, this is not important. It is the content that matters, so if you are looking for a smart name for the URL, stop, find one that is close enough to your name (and it is not stupid), and instead think of a smart name for your blog title

• blog title: it has to be short and smart, so if you are not a native English speaker (like myself), ask for a review from an English friend

• personal description: it has to say something meaningful about yourself and be ... smart

Once you've got these, the only thing missing is the content, which believe me is the most important. People won't find you by trying out various URLs, they will still continue to search the Internet on their favorite topics - good for you if your blog posts score high. And make sure that your name is displayed on every page (i.e. part of the content), so that people searching for your name have higher chances of seeing a link to your blog within the first search results.

The good thing is that if the content is bad it won't do yourself any harm (embarrassment not counted), it will only leave you in the dark. But you've been there already right?