It’s easy to get discovered on the internet. You could be famous for eatting a kitten on YouTube or for being the next Goatse but that probably isn’t what you want to be known for. As a general rule, the web is pretty much eternal, so it’s best to own who you are and present something you’re proud of. Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” But this is 2010 baby. History will be kind to us because on a daily basis we can create, edit and promote our own versions through our web presences.

For better or for worse, today’s accepted histories are the ones that get the most readers and the highest relevancy ranking in search engines. So for those of us who want to be remembered as useful members of society, we’ve got to work our asses off to ensure that we’re proud of our contributions. Blogging and earned “engagement” is one way to do that.

I’m by no means going to be the most important person at the first San Francisco Blog Club Meetup, but I’m totally ready to sing the praises of blogging and engagement for anyone who’ll listen.

WTF IS ENGAGEMENT?
There are people who deploy Twitter bots for retweets and followers but that’s not actually what everyone’s calling “real engagement”. I see engagement as the ripple of on and offsite reactions you earn via comments, Twitter, Digg, Facebook etc. Real engagement is when you’re provocative enough to get thoughtful feedback - good or bad. And thoughtful feedback means that somewhere out there somebody probably finds you important, interesting, helpful or entertaining.

WHY SELF-PUBLISHING IS RAD
Writing/blogging lets me define how I want to be perceived (and who I’m striving to be) and lets me bury all the skeletons I want to leave behind. Literally. I’m burying them on the 5th and 6th pages of Google’s search results. The face I want out there isn’t my drunk Canadian hoser-ville face, but one where I’m a legitimate contributor to other people’s lives. The fact that I can determine this is encouraging. It’s the kind of encouragement that is already provoking the collective brain power of bored smalltown kids in basements across the world. Clearly there’ve been some hiccups along the way, but the fact that scrappy indie developers, designers and publishers can flaunt their creativity from anywhere is amazing. Together we’re able to experiment, recycle and correct our flaws in real time. It ain’t curing cancer, but if the only legacy we leave behind is that we’re remembered fondly, then we’re doing great. While blogging and engagement tracking isn’t a comprehensive barometer on what I’m worth, it’s a pretty good indicator of whether or not I’m a big fierce meat puppet. One of the key tennets of most belief systems is to avoid being an inconsiderate dumbass. I figure striving to be useful is a pretty decent everyday goal.