Further to the Writers Union of Canada AGM panel RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE

If a blog is harder than a static web page, how can it be easier?

Genni Gunn asked me how much technical expertise authors need to get into blogging or podcasting. My answer was:

“How long is a piece of string?”

What I mean by that is that while you can get pretty deep into the technical side, you don’t have to.

Free blog hosting services like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, TypePad.com and LiveJournal.com keep financial inputs at zero and are designed so all you need to do is write. Compare that to setting up a website where you likely need to pay a monthly fee and either cobble a design together yourself, or pay someone else to do it.

<plug warning>Of course you could use the Union’s free web page</end of plug>

The technical barrier to entry for podcasting is a bit higher than just typing out a blog, but for a few hundred dollars in equipment and a few days learning it is completely achievable. I made the decision to start podcasting, learned what I needed, wrote my first script, read it into a microphone and posted my first episode all within about 12 hours. I started with a monthly cost of $5.

In 2005, the year I started podcasting, Oxford Dictionaries declared “podcast” to be the word of the year. In 2006 podcasting was partially eclipsed by YouTube.

The barrier to entry in producing a video blog is another step higher than podcasting if you want a polished product. But almost every cell phone these days has a camera in it that can take short movies and it’s easy to upload these to YouTube. Although I personally might want to upload material that has gone through some editing and refining, the ethos of YouTube makes uploading raw clips the norm. YouTube isn’t strictly a blog but it is a form of web presence and it’s free too.

Because I’m comfortable with technology I may have invested more time into the technical side than some choose to. That’s one of the potential downsides of blogging.

Next post, before I tell you all the wonderful things podcasting/blogging has done for me, I’ll tell you the downside.

This blog post is a duplicate of one of a series of emails I’m sending to the Writers Union of Canada listserv in advance of the Writers Union AGM panel session RAISING YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE taking place at 1:15 on Friday May 23. I’ll be joining Cynthia Good and Rick Broadhead for that panel.