I will post more about this topic in the future, but one of the reasons to have a blog is that it allows you to establish a reputation as an expert in your field. Having that reputation leads to all sorts of doors opening up for you — for example, if I weren’t blogging and otherwise creating useful content, it would be fairly unlikely that the CEO of Dzone (a social networking startup for programmers) would drop me an email and ask to please repost my linkbait to his site.
(Which is, incidentally, about as nice a success as you could ask for linkbait. Some people might be disinclined to go that route, preferring to keep control. I am more inclined to pick ability to spread over control — after all, you will still get credit as the original source, and you can think of it as investing in the success of your next project.)
The linkbait in question was my SEO on Rails post, which recently got a bit of new life breathed into it months after its original production by some light promotion on the social networking services. (If I can pound the same old drum one more time, if you’re going to invest time in creating content you might as well make the content evergreen — that post will still be good in 3 years, assuming Rails doesn’t decide to fall off the radar screen.) There is little reason to read it again if you’ve already read it, but they convinced me to put a photo up, which some folks might find interesting.
I have resisted putting up a photo on my blog for the last two years for one reason: I have had a (somewhat irrational) fear of getting judged by my age. I’m 25, incidentally.
