I hate blog posts that sound like they might be educational, but end up being nothing more than attempts to get conversation going. That strategy is welcome in a forum, I do it myself all the time. But blogs should be an offering of knowledge, opinion, or just interesting thoughts, not a plea for readers to supply same.

Here's an example: Do You Really Need Photoshop?

It has a great title, and got linked from another blog (the point, I expect). But the title question...

I know, some times it feels like no one is listening. This early in the blogging game, you might even be right. The search engines only found these blogs a few days ago, and it will take awhile to be indexed, ranked, etc.

In addition, unlike the forums, there is currently no way of measuring how many views your blog is getting. This is promised to change in future versions, but in the meantime realize that even if no one comments on your posts, you're still getting read many, many...

You might be a brilliant, insightful writer, but if someone visits one of your blog posts and sees you rarely post, they aren't going to bookmark or subscribe, no matter how much they enjoyed the single post.

The only reason they'll bookmark or subscribe is if they want to be sure they don't miss your future posts. If the doubt there will be any future posts, why bother?

So you need to post often and regularly. At least a couple of times per week if your posts are longer,...

Give some thought to what each blog entry will be entitled.

Look up at the top of your browser, in the titlebar. You should see "Blog Titles (fnarfley) - RetouchPRO" or something similar.

Search engines give disproportionate importance to the title of any single page. I'll bet you within a few days this page will rank quite highly for "fnarfley".

While I doubt you have any particular interest in fnarfley (most don't), it would help...

...if you don't eat your meat?

How many blogs do you subscribe to? I thought so.

Just as you have to look at photographs if you plan on making your own, and you need to read novels if you plan on writing one, if you want to blog well you have to read good blogs.

Here are some examples of what I consider good blogs:

• Rands in Repose - witty and thoughtful musings on nerd life. An excellent example of original writing blog
• J-Walk Blog - The first

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