I also wanted to make an appeal for more guest posters – and I have a bit of an incentive for you, to make that more appealing! But before I get on to that, here are some of the lovely guest posters that have featured on the blog so far:

• Ben Ayers wrote about how technology has changed and improved the experience of being a father, in his post “Being a technodaddy has never been more fun” back in January
• Merryn Smith pondered what the future had in store for his children, in his post “Planning ahead, or not“, also back in January
• Dan Bowsher told us about the dreaded (or not so much) NCT classes, and what they taught him, in his post “Fright Club” earlier in the year.
• Rob Jones gave an alternative view on NCT classes, and how he found support elsewhere, in his post “NCT? Of course not.” back in February.
• Iain Gilmour gave a very moving account of his feelings as he became a father for the third time, in his post “Thoughts on the arrival of baby no. 3“
• Chris Duck faced a challenge putting up a loft bed with his daughter – you can read about it in “The Battle of The Loft Bed” from earlier this year.
• Adrian Smith found himself as “The Only Dad in the Park” earlier this year, and wrote a very amusing account of how that feels.
• Andy Merchant wrote a very useful post for us when he came back from his holidays – “Tips For Flying With Small Children” will prove useful for all family fliers!
• Stuart Witts has a very similar problem to me – he loves LEGO as much as his son does. Read his account in “The Pleasure and Pain of a Shared Passion“
• My first female contributor was Andrea Devenney – who, despite being one of the funniest people I know, wrote a very moving account of her early motherhood, in “My Mother Superiority Complex, or How I Learned to Let Go and Let Dad“
• Mark Wall has written me two posts (so far!) – the excellent “Why a fish does, in fact, need a bicycle” and the equally-good “When a Part of a Dad Dies“
• My first anonymous guest post came from the cryptically-named “Marine Wife”, who wrote her post on being “Married to the Military” last month

As well as thanking all the people who have written me guest posts so far, I of course want to remind them that they’d be MORE than welcome to contribute again.

I also want to appeal to other parents (or even non-parents) who might want to contribute but haven’t so far – I would LOVE to host some more guest posts on here. It’s always nice to read about other parents’ experiences, and I’m sure it’s nice for you readers to hear someone other than me droning on once in a while!

PLUS, as an added incentive – and to thank you all – I’m going to be giving the top 3 posters (based on how many post views their posts have had) at the end of 2011 a large crate of beer to thank them (or something suitably equivalent if beer isn’t your thing!). So hopefully a small incentive if you’re thinking about writing something!

Thanks again to everyone that has written here so far – here’s to many more great posts in the future!

As a new father, I’d be more than happy to get some free stuff occasionally – whether it’s products to review, or just freebies as promotional items. But how do you get in to that game in the first place? I’m still trying to figure it out – which is ironic, as part of my own job includes identifying relevant bloggers to “engage” with. So how do I join the two up? How do I tell brands and PR folk that I’m happy to consider their offers, and how do I as a marketeer find out whether bloggers I identify are going to be open to my “advances”?

Well, hopefully a solution might be on the horizon….

A friend and industry-colleague, Andy Merchant, is working on a scheme whereby bloggers can easily show whether they do or do not welcome pitches from PR people – and if they do, what sort of thing they want to consider. It’s bascially a digital version of that sign you see on people’s door (if you’ve ever delivered newspapers, you’ll know it well):

Here’s the down-low on it from Andy himself:

“The embeddable universal blog pitching image visually symbolises the fact that you welcome, or do not welcome brand or product news pitches to your blog. Additional the “We welcome pitches” symbol can also guide the agency to the fact you welcome pitches for particular categories or products.”

So essentially you just host the image somewhere obvious on your blog, the PR or brand stumbles across your site, and they instantly know whether or not to pester you. Seems like a fairly easy solution to the hassle of annoying pitches or wasted opportunities…

I for one think this is a great idea – though of course these things only work if they get enough take-up for it to be worthwhile using. I’m very interested to hear from other bloggers though, whether you think it’s a good idea or not – and how often you get pitched to. Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter…

As well as pimping my own chapter (“How to get traffic and measure it”), which I hope proves useful to first-time bloggers, some of the other contributors are WAY better than me, so it’s worth a read whatever level of blogger you consider yourself to be. I particularly like the “Ten Easy Blog Post Ideas” list on page 20, most of which I quite regularly use myself!

It’s completely free, so go and download yourself a copy from the Kleenex Mums website. It’s an Aussie site, but blogging is a universal language, so you won’t get any less out of it if you’re not in the land down under.

Download a copy of Blogging 101

Me and Robert - a pair of posers

I posted something along these lines on Twitter yesterday – though obviously confined to the 140 character limit Twitter imposes… which, let’s face it, I’m amazed I ever manage to actually adhere to! I ramble, you see. But I suspect I’m making that point quite well now…

Anyway, as I mentioned in the post below this one, I’m hoping (all being well) to ‘remodel’ my blog as a bit of a “Daddy Blog” – not solely a daddy blog I should point out, but that’ll probably be it’s primary focus. Before anyone points it out, I KNOW there are already HUNDREDS of other Daddy Blogs out there. But when should a bit of competition ever put anyone off?

Like most bloggers, I’ll be doing this for fairly obvious reasons – a bit of networking, a nice way to save my thoughts on various subjects, a tiny bit of vanity, and a lot of wanting to share hints and tips. What I’m also hoping to do, which probably differentiates this from a lot of other blogs, is to invite other dads to join in with guest posts and discussions.

I’m not arrogant enough to think my opinions or tips are in anyway exclusive to me as a father, or indeed the same as any other fathers. So I want lots of different pespectives!

The only criteria is: You can spell and write to a basic level, and you’re a father. That’s it really! Obviously I shall retain a bit of editorial control, but I don’t intend to change anything people post really, and as a Marketeer, you can guarantee that I’ll be doing everything I can to promote your posts!

As I mentioned on Twitter, I’m going to do this over the next few weeks, but if you’re interested in becoming a guest-poster, leave a comment below so that I have a (non-Twitter) record of who is interested. Let me know how I can contact you in your comment, too. That’s all for now!

For some reason, the microphone they attached to me looks like a small black Lego man has committed suicide inside my shirt – I think that adds to the (limited) appeal of the video though…! It possibly distracts attention away from my double chin too…

I’ve been mulling over the idea of having my own blog for a few years now (how indecisive am I?!) and have finally decided to dip my toe in the water and see how it feels. It’s not a decision I’m taking lightly though. Just like the issue of our over-crowded global population, I’m firmly of the opinion that there are already far too many blogs in the world (200 million plus, last time I heard!) so starting yet another is something I feel a little guilty about. To take the analogy further, there are also also a lot of unloved blogs out there in the world – perhaps I should have considered adopting an unwanted one first? Does it even work like that?!

Either way, I thought I’d at the very least give personal blogging a go – I promise I’ll stop it and delete it if nobody is reading it, how about that? I say “personal blogging” because I’m actually a regular blogger as it is anyway. I blog on our work blog at Tamar, plus I occassionally guest-blog on sites like Media140 and Econsultancy. I also run several different web projects too (details of which I’m sure I’ll share if I keep this going!) and have a very busy job and family life, so this isn’t something I’m going to be able to devote a shed-load of time to. But I promise that I’ll try to only post stuff that other people might find interesting.

One of the reasons I finally took the plunge today was a realisation that, despite blogging in a number of different places, I don’t actually have anywhere (bar Twitter) where I can give my opinion on things non-work related. For instance, I recently had a crappy experience with the LastMinute.com customer “support” team, but short of tweeting about it there was nowhere I could vent. Just the other day on Twitter I asked Google’s Spaminator Matt Cutts how best to deal with an issue I’ve had with a Google Store order (see left). His response reaffirmed the issue that not having my own blog means I have nowhere to air issues like that – so I thought that the simplest way to deal with that was to start one!

But before taking the final step and installing WordPress as I have (and messing around with my first slew of plugins), I jotted down a few of the pro’s and con’s to me doing this, which was what eventually persuaded me. Here’s what I came up with – let me know if I missed any!

• To Blog – As I outlined above, I don’t have anywhere to post non-work related stuff, rants, vents, funnies or just random stuff.
• Not to Blog – Does anyone actually want to read that though?! Probably not for the majority, but the ability to have somewhere to rant about companies and have them actually have a chance of seeing it and taking notice is quite appealing.
• To Blog – I’ve got a reasonably-okay following on Twitter, so surely I can get a few people to read this, with the right incentives?
• Not to Blog – Let’s face it, most of them at Br!tney spam-bots anyway – can spam-bots even read?!
• To Blog – Back when I first started out with websites, I used the site henweb.co.uk as my “hub” – a good place to link to all the different stuff I was doing. I’ve not had that for a long time, and if nothing else it’ll make sure I don’t forget stuff I’m doing, which is something that happens far too often! :D
• Not to Blog – There are already 200 million blogs. Do I really need to make that 200,000,001? Have I even got time to update it or enough crap to say?
• To Blog – OF COURSE I HAVE! Anyone who knows me will attest that I’ve *always* got crap to say…! :D
• Not to Blog – Is blogging just an exercise in online vanity?
• To Blog – A few people have told me I’m an alright wordsmith in the past – including a few writers that I respect a lot. Even if nobody reads this, practise is always good isn’t it?

I’m sure there are other reasons that I’ve missed – why not let me know via the comments? If I’m being honest, I suspect my pro/con exercise was actually doing more to convince me than I’d hoped it would, but I think I’ve decided that I’m going to give this a go…

Henry

P.S. People are always telling me that I don’t do endings very well, so you might want to bear that in mind if you’re going to subscribe…!