2 April 2008 6 Comments

In my opinion, reading blogs is the very fundamental to writing good blogs. You can write well only if you know what to write and how to write! But how do you know what you want to write? How do you know what you can write and how can you write something?

Ask yourself a question? How did you start blogging?
I came to know of the word “blog”, when I was reading a website that talked about it. It was actually a blog itself, but I didn’t have the slightest idea of it at that time. That was when I started reading more and more blogs. I read on many topics like life, sports, technology, culture, food, etc. and it was through reading so many blogs in different niches that I was able to discover my interest primarily in technology and meta-blogging than anything else. Its not that I don’t read blogs in any other niches now! Will Taft’s healthy living for people that talks about food, health & fitness and environment, and though written in broken English, Graphic-Identity’s design blog are one of my favorites to read being very informative!

Helping you find your interests is not the only way in which reading blogs helps. Reading is what helps you to learn how to write and more importantly how to do it effectively. Do you know of a person who learned to write meaningfully without learning to read? Let me know if you know any such person as I will be glad to feature him here at Inspirit.

Let us now look at a few important aspects of reading blogs, and learn how reading can positively impact our blog’s content, promotion and traffic:

Learn to market better: When you read various blogs, you get to know how people market themselves or the content/ideas they are trying to sell and have successfully become some kind of micro-celebrities in the blogosphere.

Improve your grammatical skills: Improve your grammar, vocabulary and formatting skills by reading various blogs. If you read good blogs and try to learn from someone’s style of writing… you’ll definitely see your blog entries getting better every time you publish.

Learn to communicate effectively: I think that in a large number of cases, writer’s block is not experienced because of lack of ideas for writing but because bloggers do not understand how to communicate to the target audience effectively. You’ll observe means and methods employed by bloggers to present their ideas only by knowing how they write.

Build a social network and a stronger readership base: Being displayed on someone’s BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog widgets often, can help you get more visits from the blog where you are displayed. Being a frequent reader and an active participant at a blog helps the blog owner to know you better. It helps you to socialize and make friends with other bloggers and increases your chances of being read by a wider audience.

Reap the EntreCard benefit: You’ll all agree that chain-dropping on EntreCard widgets is actually a misuse of the concept, even though it maybe beneficial to both the parties! Dropping cards at the blog to read is a wiser and healthier practice. EntreCard is now well-known for bringing in a lot of traffic to your blog and why won’t you want to benefit from it.

Pass your time: Whether you are experiencing the writers’ block, or you’re not feeling well or simply don’t have the mood to write… spend some time in reading blogs. By reading different kinds of blogs, you can boost your knowledge, sharpen your thinking capability, have an hearty laugh on reading a fresh joke or simply pass time. An Idle Mind is a Devil’s Workshop! Spending your free time of reading blogs is not that bad an idea!

Gather new ideas: Honestly speaking, most of my ideas come from reading other blogs. In fact, this very post comes as a result of my observation of benefits of reading, when I was reading other blogs! Even, in case you don’t get any new ideas to write about on your blog, from reading… you can write about what you read. Such reviews are generally interesting to read and are a channel of sharing valuable resources across the blogosphere.

When it comes down to making a decision, it all depends on why you are blogging. Decide what is important to you and what you hope to achieve.Every minute you spend in reading will pay you back in the same coin as a positive impact on your blog’s readability, subscriber base and ranks, etc. Finding some time for reading is definitely good. However do not cut on something more important that you might have got to do.

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