Neil Macintosh, who works for Guardian Unlimited, was one of the first journalists in Britain to blog, starting in 2001. He says "Interactive blogs offer a huge opportunity for freelance writers to establish themselves in their areas of expertise, and make themselves better and more productive journalists".

Neil McIntosh, WWN Talk - 8 Jan 2007

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Report by Marianne Powell

Our January speaker, Neil McIntosh, spoke about how writers can make good use of blogs.

Blogging is a very easy way to publish your work on the web, according to Neil McIntosh, the assistant editor at Guardian Unlimited. It’s a kind of online diary (blog is short for weblog), which has become incredibly popular in recent years. You don’t have to understand technology, and you can set one up in five minutes – simply register on a site, start writing, hit save and ‘marvel’ at your published work.

But why bother? After all, you’re not getting paid to do this kind of writing. But according to McIntosh there are several advantages to blogging. For a start, it’s a direct route to your audience. You can build an intimate relationship with your readers outside of the commissioning process which has real value. For example, if writing a book, you can post a synopisis and ask for comments, using the online community to help you. You can still make money this way – putting material online for free doesn’t tend to stop people buying the printed version. In fact, blogging provides a good chance to build up a following.

There is also money to be made from blogging, although this tends to be in areas such as ICT and finance, where you can put Google ads on your site. Again, this is not technically difficult to do. According to McIntosh, there are some journalists who spotted a niche early on and are now earning 6-figure salaries.

For those of us who don’t write about such lucrative topics, blogs can still generate work. They are a very reassuring tool for commissioning editors. Blogs are a way to showcase your writing before the subs get to work, so you can prove that your great writing is all your own (unlike cuttings or weblinks of published work that will have been edited and proofed by others).

So what to write about? Well, anything and everything. It can be personal and everyday, or tackle wider topics. If it relates to your writing specialism(s), make sure you put your blog address on your business cards or email signoff. If you use online forums, put your address at the bottom of comments you make, to build a buzz around your work. However don’t get too hung up about the number of readers – it’s fine to have a fairly niche blog, and editors who look at it will be more concerned about the quality of the writing than huge amounts of readers.

Neil recommends three websites to start a blog. www.blogger.com is free to use. You can pick templates, with various colours, and it’s really simple to set up. www.typepad.com offers blogging services for a small fee, but it allows you more control. Finally, www.wordpress.org is a state of the art blogging tool, and very powerful.

So, log on, get writing, and you’ll soon have your very own blog.

Other useful sites:

• www.blogher.com: a site for women bloggers
• www.technorati.com: an index of blogs
• www.completetosh.com: Macintosh’s own blog