Good question…

There are 3 reasons actually:

1. To show a little more of my personality online.
The site was originally intended as a simple portfolio with the obligatory ‘about me’ and ‘contact’ pages, but the addition of a blog element to the site gives me the opportunity to reveal a little more of my personality, so prospective employers or freelance clients to ‘know what they’re getting’. I hope it will show me as a creatively motivated person and that it will act as a kind of filtration mechanism when it comes to enquiries. I often find and read great stuff online and I’d like to share things with other people.

2. To get noticed.
OK, so a little part of me wants to be higher up the Google rankings, and so a blog is a great way to get a lot of links and keywords on the site. Hopefully after a while the sum of the site content will build a representative picture of me and I’ll see a rise in visits and link up with interesting and like minded people. RSS feeds and interesting content can help me draw people in too.

3. To learn about how they work and are put together.
I’ve chosen WordPress to run my blog, but I’ve also decided to use it as a CMS for the entire site. I’m treating it as a learning experience and I hope to progress in my understanding of web development, as well as being able to offer similar solutions to my clients. WordPress is a powerful tool and I’m looking forward to getting to grips with it.

4. To let friends and family see what I’m up to.
I live away from most of my family and friends, so a participatory blog and website is a good way to stay in touch. They can see what I’m writing about and use the feeds etc to monitor changes. I’ll be plugging in to sites like Flickr, Facebook and last.fm, so there will hopefully be a strong social aspect to the site.

Of course, I haven’t yet worked out if I’ve actually got anything to say worth reading, which is the main thing if I’m writing a blog. Let’s just see how it works out…

Cartoon from www.gapingvoid.com