Yes, lot’s of people ask this. I could reply with another question, what is the point of a diary? You write down all your thoughts, supposedly for your own amusement, and occasionally someone nosey will have a peek and read bitchy things about
themselves or find they have been omitted completely. (I don’t know what’s worse, being bitched about or totally forgotten). In the same way, a blog for most people is a collection of thoughts and pictures with occasional reference to others thoughts and pictures that people can pick up and read.

But is a blog more than just a diary? Does it have other benefits? The answer is yes. It is interactive and available to the public, readers can leave their comments and share your ramblings with others. The other major advantage, so I’ve read so many times on other blogs, is that it is good for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). A website that has fresh content added to it on a regular basis is not only more likely to be indexed by Google but will attract more users to the website (or so the theory goes).

So far the effects of having a blog on this website have been positive. Since that flurry of initial interest from friends and supporters, I realise that this blog is destined to be read by accidental readers who stumble upon it through Google. Hopefully they will find the content relevant and useful and are not looking for something completely different. (This happens to me often, as I drift into irrelevant random websites and then forget what I was looking for in the first place.) That is why your blog needs to be relevant to the rest of your website. It needs to contain the “keywords” that will bring the right people to the right place. In other words, there is no point writing about your cat’s sleeping habits if your website is about selling cars.

But does this bother me? No. In fact, I feel at liberty to say what I like, a great freedom not available to many people of the world. I can give my theories on this and that, show techniques, take photographs and all to my heart’s content. The only censorship comes from me. I’ve always wanted to keep some sort of record of what art techniques I’ve tried, paintings I’ve done and forgotten about, places I’ve visited and exhibitions I’ve seen. And this is ideal. If it offers something interesting for others, then that is an added bonus.

I have to admit though, as an incredibly nosey person, I enjoy reading other people’s blogs. It gives a snapshot on someone’s life (well a part of it) and is a lot more interesting than watching TV. I’ve found a lot of blogs that are incredibly useful. This blog wouldn’t exist without other people’s blogs, who told me how to do it in the first place. But I’m not one of those secret blog readers that never leave a comment. I like to give an acknowledgement to the author that I’ve read what they’ve written.

Talking of words, this brings me on to my next question, what is the point of dictionaries? To look up a word you have to know how to spell it and if you knew how to spell it you wouldn’t need a dictionary…