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I just think too hard about writing for our Eloquence blog. Fact is, I am a speaker far more than a writer. I know this because I am terrible at journaling (I get bored) and if I really need to process something I either talk it through with a friend or D (my husband, it’s short for a cute little nickname that I’m pretty sure he’d rather I not share – ooh, doesn’t it drive you crazy not to know that kind of thing. It does me. Sorry.) or I take a long walk in the wilderness where no one can see or hear me and I talk it through. It is in the saying – and hearing myself saying – that I find my answers.

This is why I struggle to post as often as I’d like. And yet, I want to do this blog thing. I want to do it because it makes sense from a contribution perspective for those checking out our website and I want to do it because I really would like to stretch myself in the writing arena. So, here I am blogging.

I’m not new to blogging. I have a private blog which I have had since I was first pregnant with my first daughter just under six years ago. In that blog I talk about everything from my marriage to D to the fundus measurements during my pregnancies along to documenting my Center Child’s fascination with teeny crawly creatures. It’s password protected and just close family and friends have access. I also have a Blogger blog where I began blogging about Eloquence related stuff. See, I’ve been a fan of blogging and writing for a while – it’s just not my most natural strength. Which means that a big decision in the blogging area can be overwhelming for me because I’m already stretched considerably by simply doing the blog.

But a decision had to be made. I was having our website redone to make it more interactive and interesting, mostly to people but also to those beloved little (or are they gigantic?) “bots” that freakishly creep the internet searching for tantalizing content to store and promote for all the world to see. And I certainly don’t want to be stretching my writing limits with no landing pad. For me, it’s in the landing that my ideas have complete meaning, which means they’ve got to hit open ears.

The big question, then? Do we want an Innie or an Outie blog? Will we host the Eloquence Communication blog with my website (and use WordPress for creation) or will it continue to be hosted on Blogger? Oh how I agonized. My family website is WordPress and I like it, but I don’t have the time and expertise to create then integrate an WordPress blog into my website (no matter how passionately my techy friends argue that WordPress is so easy). My business blog has been on Blogger but it’s not hosted on my server and therefore requires a whole new level of interest for a person to click from that blog to the Eloquence Communication website link over in the sidebar. It might seem like an easy decision since we were having a designer do my website revision and therefore going with an innie could be done as part of the website revision project, but then I heard this SEO expert  talking about how he is convinced that Google favors their own websites and Blogger is owned by Google. So, even if people might click around in the Eloquence Communication website more easily with an integrated blog, they’re never going to see our innie blog if Google keeps putting other blogs up higher on the list than mine.

You see how this feels very complex. It didn’t help that every web expert with whom I spoke had a different opinion – or no opinion on the topic at all.

As you can see, I decided to go innie. Mostly because I like the idea of tucking my posts neat and cozily into my mother-site and I want to make it easy for people to get from my blog to other information about Eloquence Communication. I invite your thoughts – especially if they support my decision since I’m not inclined to change it now. But I can handle them either way. And in any case, I hope you enjoy our innie blog – and our newly fancied-up website.