Unlike my more established colleague, I am still relatively new to the communications world. When I walked into AgencyNext World Headquarters for the first time, Sterling introduced me to the blogosphere – the possibilities blew my mind. I’ve only been blogging a short time, but I know this much: I’m addicted. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I know that I can’t go more than a few days without sitting down and letting my thoughts guide me. I’m typing this at a mile a minute right now because it’s straight brain-to-reader goodness. I love to talk about blogging - it comes naturally - even though I haven’t celebrated my two-year “blogoversary” yet.

A word of advice to new bloggers: you’ve got yourself a blog, and people have paid attention to it (hopefully). You’re excited, you’re happy to have contributed to the general conversation, and you have a sense that you might be able to keep this up. So you do. You write, you comment, you trackback, you link, etc. But after a while, it starts to fade. That “new blog smell” that comes with every new blog begins to disappear. You may doubt yourself. You may question the worth of your efforts. You invest all this time and energy, yet it seems as if people aren’t paying attention to you anymore (and that’s half the fun of blogging, isn’t it?). Perhaps your time would better be used towards…

Stop right there.

Don’t develop that thought any further. If you do, it will always be there when life in the blogosphere gets mundane, traffic slows down, or people seem to be paying less attention.

A lot of bloggers experience burnout, or lack of genuine interest, after any length of time. What sets the true believers apart from the rest of the pack is their staying power. I have an endless amount of respect for anyone who has been blogging for any long period of time because they have committed themselves to it and can be counted on next month to still be there, regardless of circumstance. That’s what I aspire to: years down the road, I want to be able to say I was there and I blogged about it (a lot like the “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt” saying - only with some enthusiasm).

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