doteduguru

Ok so the obvious question is why do I think that I should start a blog?  A few months ago I came across a blog post about reasons to blog that really hit home.  At the time it all sounded good, but I instantly realized that being a blogger isn’t for everyone.  I think one thing that any competent professional wants to do is to grow them self, we all know that personal knowledge is everyone’s most important asset.  Although I don’t have all the reasons that are listed to blog a few of them definitely stand out.

• Everyone needs a place to write down their thoughts, why not a blog where I’ll be forced to structure them in such a way to first of all be legible but also something I can come back to down the road to update and follow-up?
• Building a reputation as a credible and knowledgeable individual is something that I hold in high regard and strive, is blogging not an outlet to accomplish this?  That’s right the blog is the perfect outlet to gain market credibility and professional development.
• A place to connect with others in my industry to share ideas, open thoughts, allows others to collaborate.  One thing I definitely hope this blog to accomplish to be a place where I can throw ideas about higher education web marketing out and find out what others in the industry are doing and to build a network of sharing.
• Resume builder and financial compensation are two things that have to be acknowledged as reasons to create a blog.  Also to get to the point of making money you have to be established as a credible source with a strong listening community, but also finding a better job through a blog is a form a financial compensation
• Become an expert in my niche market.  As I mentioned earlier I’m in higher education and am responsible for a liberal arts college website.  Although I read tons of blogs about web analytics, SEO, web marketing, web designers, web developers, etc. there are only a handful of sources that are truly good sources for people who are web marketing in higher education.  I spent enough time looking at all of the above why not create a place that combs through everything and finds uses that are useful for higher education uses?

So after much going back and forth I’ve decided for a New Year’s resolution that I want to build my professional career.  This blog is me following through on that commitment.

This blog will discuss the most recent in the web world and how ways that I see higher education being able to use it, this includes:

• web development
• web programming
• web marketing
• SEO
• web design
• social media
• multimedia (videos, slideshows, podcasts, etc.)
• web analytics
• e-mail marketing

Although that’s the case I really want this to be a very practical blog and a lot of posts will be informative and useful things that will be able to help individuals that are completely out of the higher education or web fields.  That’s right there are tons of very practical uses for RSS, Wikis, tips, and websites that have uses that can be useful anywhere.  Plus don’t we all really want to know and understand FacebookMySpaceGoogleYouTubeYahoo, and the rest of the big buzz websites out there better?