I wrote about blogging today (BillCara.com).

About your blog, can I ask the number one reason why you do it? If I know that then I might be able to comment about your blog.

Given that we are the "intelligent" species, everything we do in life comes down to motive. It's a problem for some people to actually say why they are doing something, but if you are going to blog (which is a personal expression), then you are going to be communicating differently than when you are writing as a columnist for traditional media.

And I wonder how much time you've spent thinking about the difference.

Traditional media is broadcast media whereas blogging is network media. Broadcast is one-to-many vs. network, which is many-to-many. The difference is huge.

While it's fair to say that both mediums can be educational, informational and facilitating, the broadcast media succeeds because it is selling or entertaining whereas the blog medium succeeds because it is sharing.

BTW, it is tough for many people to say why they are doing something because it's a method of self-protection when communicating with people who don't fully understand the motives of the person they are speaking to. That's the case with traditional media because the public knows that the media source is not fully transparent.

When I was doing investment sales and was asked a first question by a client, I used to always say (mostly to myself) to get through that "noise" asap and get down to the second question, because that's what the person was really motivated about.

With blogging, the more you immerse yourself personally -- and without the usual defenses -- the quicker you establish a link with people. People see that you are truly sharing something (expertise, experiences, warnings, whatever) and they respond.

I found that my web stats for Trader Wizard continuously moved higher in number of user sessions strictly by word of mouth. But what really interested me the most was the average number of minutes per session that my networkers were online in their sessions.

That number grew every week until in mid-December when I stopped publishing TW it was up to 9min:29sec per session. That's an impressive number because the mean and median average were quite close.

In fact some were on for a few seconds and a few were on for 30 min or more, but the huge majority were spending about the average amount of time. To me, this is a validation from a growing niche network that what I have to offer is something they want.

Anyway, if you can tell me your motive in writing, I might be able to help.

Best regards,