As part of the 24 Hours of PASS, Steve Jones recommended that bloggers actively maintain their blog roll (blogs they follow). A little while ago, my blog roll was fairly short - seven blogs, to be exact. In part, this was because the list of blogs I (currently) follow is incredibly long - at least I think so. I was also only listing blogs that I was of the opinion were very on topic, and extremely helpful. I do realize that point of view is valid, but I also understand why Steve recommended expanding such lists - or at the very least, I have my own interpretation of what Steve was trying to communicate.
Reasons To List a Blog Roll
Quid Pro Quo
(This is the "self serving" reason.) If I tell you who I listen to, it's possible that those bloggers will hear about it. If they know I blog and listen to them, they're somewhat likely to visit here, and there exists a possibility that they may start following me. There's then a slight chance those bloggers may then decide to add this blog to their blog roll. Sounds like Drake's equation... but maybe there is intelligent life elsewhere...
Establishing a Respectable Community
There's always search engines, aggregators, and even community sites like Steve runs. If someone is looking for help or information, they'll probably be able to find it there. But search engines don't rank on "trust". (Maybe a little, indirectly.) If you frequent this blog, and listen to the opinions and advice given here, then it follows that you have extended me a level of trust higher than a search engine. If I then tell you that I listen to some other blogs, it should carry forward that those blogs also deserve a little more trust than a Google or Bing ranking.
Encouraging Commuity
At this point, I'm a "little guy" - at least I think I am. I don't get much traffic - but that gives this point even more weight. Anyone who ventures far enough into the outer reaches of the SQL/SSIS community to find me must not mind the neighborhood. If that's the case, then they probably already know just fine how to get back downtown - but a little direction around the suburbs could be just what they're looking for.
My Reader
My list is (I think) rather long. I believe that part of the reason is my reader and how I read. I use Viigo on my BlackBerry, which gives me the freedom to not read feeds on my computer. I don't know how unique I am for not having read basically any feeds using desktop software. I do this for a particular reason: when I'm at my desktop (laptop, actually) I have the capability to get real work done. When I'm away from my computer, and have a minute of time to kill, it's very easy to make that time at least partially useful by catching up on some news. If you happen to have a BlackBerry, check out Viigo. It needs (IMO) some improvements - especially on the desktop interface for managing feeds - but for usefulness on the phone itself, I haven't found any better.
The Blog Roll
I;ve updated the blogger blogroll, but there's no way I'm going to list all of these in that widget. (That would just be too much work.) Here they are in no particular order and uncategorized (maybe next time I'll do that):
CNET News
CBC Top Stories
Gizmodo
How To Change The World (Guy Kawasaki)
Lifehacker
TechReport - Articles
TechReport - News
SQL Server Central - Articles
Engaget
The Daily WTF
Paul Thurott's WinInfo
MS SQL Server Performance Team Blog
William McKnight
David Loshin
Presentation Zen
Database Journal
Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
Jamie Thomson (Old)
SQLTeam.com
Cracked
John Welch
MS PerformancePoint Team Blog
MS SQLCAT Team Blog
Techdirt
MS SQL Release Team Blog
MS Business Intelligence Team Blog
MSDN SQL Server Headlines
ZDNet Emerging Technology
SearchCIO
SearchDataManagement
Craig Schiff
SQLIS.com
Tom's Hardware - News
MS SSRS Team Blog
The Onion - War For The White House
Paul Thurott
WeGotServed.uk
Simon Sabin
MSDN Canada
MS C# Headlines
MS CodePlex Team Blog
Kevin White
Wade Dorell
Phil Brammer
Matthew Roche
Michael Entin
Applied Business Intelligence
Geoff Hiten
Paul Ibison
Donald Farmer
Mosha Pasumansky
Jimmy May
MS SSIS Team Blog
Alberto Ferrari
James Nix
Mick Horne
Douglas Laudenschlager
Krish Krishnan
Sid Atkinson Jr.
Cringely on Technology
Brent Ozar
TechReport - Blogs
Escape From Cubicle Nation
Sara Ford (CodePlex tagged items)
SSWUG Articles
MS Canadian Developer Connection
Jean-Rene
Rushabh Mehta
Rafael Salas
Andy Leonard
Jessica Moss
Duane Douglas
John Myers
Brian Knight
Dan English
Christian Cote
Joe Webb
SQL Server Integration Services - Community Buzz
SQL Server Integration Services - Recent Downloads and Resources from Microsoft
Devin Knight
Sarma Musty
Kirk Haselden
James Beresford
Microsoft Connect: Most Recent Feedback - SQL Server
BI Tinkering
SQL Lion
Benny Austin
BI Twibe Blog
SOA Blogs
Jitu Raheja
Karlo Bartels
Tomer Lev
Altius Tech
Jamie Thomson (New)
SearchWinDevelopment - News
SearchWinDevelopment - Architecture
Bootup Labs
Merv Adrian
Ronald Damhof
Steve Dine
Dan E. Linstedt
Mark Madsen
Susan Major
Ron Powell
Dan Power
Neil Raden
Colin White
Lyndsay Wise
Steve Jones
MS Windows Home Server Team Blog
Scott Stauffer
Todd, if you are planning on taking your blogging a bit further, there's some other (probably more important) things to do.
ReplyDelete1) Get off a hosted blog and get your own domain. The extra control / flexibility is worth it, plus it boost your serach rankings.
2) Think hard about SEO - your own wordpress blog gives you much more freedom to help with that, with addins like the All In One SEO pack.
3) Give your site a name that combines your industry and your favourite animal.
One of the above hints may be not entirely helpful. And if you re-emerge as "C# Otter" I will suspect you will have missed one of the helpful ones :)
Hi Todd,
ReplyDeleteI do agree that you should think about SEO, but I do not agree with James suggestion in point 3.
May be you might want to check out the ebook by Bradd McGehee titled "How to be an Exceptional DBA" in which he has suggested some points on how to maintain your blog profile.
It's available for free on Red-gate and I recently blogged about this ebook bundle on my blog.
Regards,
Siddharth Mehta