Not that I’m one to wax nostalgic, but the Blogosphere has changed significantly since (I pretty much abandoned it). The trend in the last few years has been all about Social Networking, as opposed to people building blogs on their sites and standing alone.

No one will find you unless you have a LinkedIn, MySpace, and/or a Facebook profile to augment your presence.

Some things remain the same (for example, EVERYONE who has a web page or blog wants to be noticed…), but relying on an avalance of readers from even a popular blog seems to be gone forever…

My old formula of  “Shine a spotlight on others and they will do the same to make you shine like a superstar” still seems to work. So does being totally obnoxious to get attention… but do I really want the latter? It was a double-edged sword.  Sure, people found me in search engines, and I got a lot of design jobs… but then those same people would ask me to censor myself because I was now associated with their business/product…

So what’s a guy to do?
Who wants to read a bland and sterilized Eric Brooks?

I’ve been reading a lot of books on marketing lately, one I highly recommend is Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies, by Susannah Gardner. Though it’s circa 2004, back when the Blogosphere was thriving, much of the principles still stand today.

I’m restructuring here (besides the new all-css design). I need to post here more often. Find a way to automate if I have to in order to keep the site fresh.

In all of the books I have been reading there has been one word consistently used in all of them: INFORMATION. Whether you are selling a product or just being a narcissist looking for attention, your primary goal in making blogs or new web pages is “giving your readers useful information”.

The rest will fall into place.
This is my new goal here.