To start, this is how I came to see the power of the blog:

In 2006 when writing Colic Solved I read somewhere that every author needed a blog. Blogs, I was told, were particularly important for authors who weren’t famous. I wasn’t famous. So I ran to the bookstore and bought Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s Naked Conversations, the essential book for understanding blogs.  Then I began my first blog, Parenting Solved, with the shallow intent of selling books.

But just a few months after starting Parenting Solved I posted on an infant product company with my take on a merger they were undertaking and what it meant for parents. The post was picked up on a feed for one of the foreign stock exchanges and I enjoyed a nice spike in traffic.  The following day a call came from the company’s headquarters in Europe to my chief who happened to be a consultant to the company. They wanted to know my story.

Until then I had no idea that anyone was listening. Until then I didn’t care that anyone was listening.  I just wanted to move books. But at that point I realized blogging wasn’t a marketing gimmick but instead a real tool for positioning myself and my ideas.

You could say I started shortsighted and ended up global.

I continued posting to Parenting Solved until early 2009. But burnt out with my ‘reassuring voice of authority’ (which I still dispense liberally in person) I felt it was time to focus on something else.

I started 33 Charts in April 2009 when I saw room for physician commentary at the intersection of social media and health care. I thought it would be a great place to experiment and shape my ideas.

That’s how I started and wound up here. And so far it’s been a blast. I can see the power of the blog. Look for me to stop when it isn’t.

If you like this post you might check out the 33 charts Blogging Archives. It’s everything written here on blogging. And every post here contains hand curated tags that help you find related writing on the site. Happy surfing!