Deadpoet’s Cave

Often, I am asked: Why blog? Why bother with blogging and bloggers?

1. Blogs offer alternate views.

We are supposed to trust MSM because they have editors and all sorts of checks to make sure that news is accurate and impartial. Can we?

Let’s say you read this article about a project to build artificial coral reefs and relocate corals in danger of peril. Commendable, you might think, as I did. After all, “the dredging would have damaged the corals and muddied the waters, threatening their survival had they not been moved”.

And if you haven’t guessed, there is a ‘but’.

But later in the day, I came across Ria Tan’s post: Large debris on Labrador explained?

The project sounds nice in theory but something somewhere seems to have gone terribly wrong. I would have been none the wiser without Ria’s post, without this alternative view.

2. Blogs have Google juice

Ok, I admit up front that I’m plugging my mum’s cakes.

Still, I’m telling it as it is. This morning, my mum was sharing over breakfast that a stranger found her blog and ended up ordering Sugee Cake from her. (Most of my mum’s customers are through referrals and my aunts’ personal marketing efforts.) Apparently, a search on Google for Sugee Cake brings up a lot of entries from Malaysia. This woman was looking for homemade Sugee Cake in Singapore.

Good thing my mum blogs. Her entry is the 6th in Google for “Sugee Cake”.

The lesson here: Blogs have Google juice. If you have a minority cause, a niche expertise or an alternative pastime, you should blog. It’ll help you be found more easily through search engines and if you play your cards right, you can build a community of like-minded people through your blog.

• Mum’s cake
• SinGeo
• This is a test | Google Docs & Spreadsheets | Google Reader
• My mum’s cakes