Michael Castellon

A lot of my friends and people I meet are on the fence about blogging. Occasionally I meet people who know a lot about a topic but never think to share their knowledge with the world.

For example, a friend that Lauren and I went to the Austin City Limits Festival with knows a lot about Texas music. A whole lot. Growing up, her father exposed her to a lot of great stuff, and she spends a lot of her time listening to new music and seeing live shows. I've known her for a decade but I only recently realized that she's a living encyclopedia of music - where bands are from, their touring habits, their best albums and which other bands and musicians they write tour with. Obviously, she made a great ACL companion.

I floated the idea of her starting a blog that focused on Texas music. It's something she knows a lot about, enjoys talking about, and she knows a lot of information that would be useful to people who want to find new stuff to listen to but don't know where to start.

She told me that she wouldn't know where to start, that she wasn't "techie enough" to manage a blog and that she wasn't a very good writer.

The fact is, though, that virtually none of these things matter. Free blogging services like Blogger and Posterous make it easy for anyone to start a blog in just a few simple clicks and can be scaled as your audience or your needs change. Starting a blog is far easier than setting up a Facebook page and posting is about as easy as writing an e-mail. I'm writing and publishing this post using Gmail.

As far as writing, that's a skill that comes naturally to you when you're writing about something you enjoy, if for no reason other than you care about your content.

Sometimes, our experiences with writing in high school and college spooks us later in life because we're scared about what people think, that we'll be judged or harshly critiqued or that peoples' opinion of us might be affected if we write something that turns out to be honest or revealing.

But the Web makes writing exceptionally open and free. Sure, we may be judged harshly for mistakes that we make while writing and editing. But in the beginning, it's what we're offering that matters, not how we offer it. The very nature of blogging - writing quick, helpful or insightful posts - makes mistakes commonplace. Your audience expects you to make some mistakes. But they'll forgive you if you're being honest.

If the information I'm reading is helpful, like a tip about a new band or how to fix a problem, I'm less likely to dismiss the writer because of a few misplaced commas or typos. This is just something you need to get over when you start writing. Plus, as you write and think more, your overall writing skills will improve remarkably. Your confidence will soon follow.

Another point I want to make is that writing helps us understand our subjects and ourselves more. When we write, we research, think, and form thoughts related to what it is we want to communicate. We better refine our logic and our understanding of our thoughts. You don't have to be an expert to start blogging on a topic. But by blogging about a topic, you may find yourself evolving into an expert. It's a pretty amazing thing, really.

So get busy. Join Blogger or Posterous and write down a few thoughts. You can even do it anonymously. If you don't like what you write, you can delete it later. The important thing is to start.

Give it a try. Let me know how it goes.