On November 14, 2006 I took the opportunity in speech # 7 to introduce my Toastmasters club to blogging. The learning objective was to "Research Your Project" and give a 5-7 minute speech. Take a look. I think you'll like it.

Have you guys seen my new BLOG? “New what?” you say? My new BLOG. It will be online very soon. O.K., let me explain what it is. A BLOG is a personal note book on the internet. You write and upload your thoughts and opinions to a website and you invite others to register and respond to your comments. It’s an online community of common interest and I’m using mine to talk about things that interest me. According to my web master, the actual word is weblog. It comes from the early days of the internet when news would post to the net at regular intervals. It’s been shortened over the years to just “blog”. Well yours truly is about to become the next blogger.

Are you wondering how I heard about BLOGs? In the news mostly. Financial experts, athletes and news anchors all have them. In fact if you watch channel 12 news in the morning you’ll hear Tanya Terry talk about her BLOG whenever she’s going to start a new book club or speak at an event. She gives her views on the event afterwards and keeps you posted on what you missed at the last book club meeting. People as diverse as political junkies, activists and college alumni associations have put them to good use, as well. One of our fellow Toastmasters, Eric Feng from Singapore, was featured in this month’s magazine. He has a pretty good one too. There are even Catholic nuns with BLOGs who tell you about their calling as a recruiting tool for the convent. So I figured that it would be fun to have one of my own just to see if I could develop a following.

So, what am I actually doing with it? What is my BLOG about? MartyBLOG is going to cover a variety of topics. I’m going to talk about basic finance like knowing the difference between and the purpose for a checking account and a savings account and how they work together. When it comes to spiritual matters I might share some thoughts that we discussed in our Sunday school class. Or maybe I’ll share the key learning points for me from the sermon on a given Sunday morning. I’ll spend a few days in the political realm discussing upcoming or past elections. I’ll also write about changes in voting trends and electoral demographics around the country. And naturally we’re going to talk about the Boy Scouts of America. It helped to make me who I am today and it’s still doing the same thing for young boys in this day and time and I am going to brag about the organization to the world. I’ll devote some time and some web page links to Toastmasters of course and as my speaking career takes off we’ll veer it in that direction to chronicle my development in that realm. I’m also going to cover the variety of duties and business opportunities of the notary public office in future articles. There’s bound to be something else noteworthy that tickles my fancy and I’ll write about that too and invite the world to write back and tell me what they think.

My web developer is already working out a design as I speak. This thing is going to have some sweet features but it’s not going to be a gauche operation. Besides the written content we’re looking at how to turn it into a money making venture sooner or later. The key is to create traffic to the website. While we create traffic or hits on the site we’re also looking at ways to attract advertisers who will want to attach their banner to the site once we blow up and become the hottest new thing on Google.

There is a strategy for making that work effectively too. We have to submit the site to a bunch of search engines so that it comes up on people’s search lists on a regular basis. Google and Dogpile are the obvious choices but there are others too. We’re also looking at a subscriber only e-mail newsletter with an online bill pay and shopping cart feature. Which reminds me, I need to start working on my MartyBLOG t-shirt and baseball caps. We’ll have an archive so people can go back and see what they missed or read an article a second time that piqued their interest the first time they read it. There’s also a feature that will notify subscribers automatically when I post a new article.

Now for some obvious questions. How do you find my BLOG? Easy, go to www.martinlindsey.com . While it’s still under construction you may just find a generic “coming soon” page for the time being but that is the address. So, how did I get my own dot-com? I just beat all the other Martin Lindseys in the world to the punch. I bought my domain name about two years ago just in case I came up with some great web site or web application that I could really sink my teeth into and along came BLOGs. I’ve always enjoyed writing and I’ve always had an opinion so this is perfect for me. It’s like having my own newspaper with no bosses. I’m the founder, publisher and editor. You guys really should go online and buy the dot-com version of your names too, again, just in case. See if it’s available for cheap now so you don’t have to pay a fortune to buy it off of somebody else later.

As you can see I am completely engrossed and impassioned by my first real foray into the internet. And there are definite possibilities with this thing so if you have any suggestions for improvement after you check it out I’m all ears. I’ll be welcoming you to a new viewpoint on some of the practical matters that affect everyone in a matter of days. When we get up and running, stay tuned for regular posts. Most importantly chime in with your questions and opinions and I will see you online, very soon.