A Message From the Founder's Keyboard...

By L. Avery Brown
Founder, RBU
Editor-in-Chief, RBU: The Group Blog
http://whenasouthernwomanrambles.blogspot.com/
http://magnoliablossomreview.blogspot.com/

Greetings and welcome to the March edition of Real Bloggers United: The Group Blog. 

The blogosphere is such an amazing thing, isn't it?  Millions of people log on everyday to peruse the words and images offered up by bloggers from all walks of life and from every possible locale on this beautiful blue sphere we call home.  There are blog sites about everything from the mundane to the outrageous.  And the vast majority of those blogs are started and maintained by amateur authors, poets, and photographers. 

But for most people who take up blogging, it's a passing fancy, a novelty so to say.   They jump in with both feet and find themselves posting as quickly as they can hit the submit button.  And then after the newness of playing with the medium wears off and the realization that it takes a good deal of time to maintain a site and to grow a loyal readership sets in, a vast majority of those sites are abandoned. 

However, there are some sites with blogthurs who are able to survive the honeymoon phase of blogging and find their 'blogging groove'.  These are the bloggers...writers, photographers, musicians, etc... who are able to truly embrace this new medium of expression in ways that those fly by night bloggers will never understand.   And what they wind up with are blog sites that are anything thing but amateur in their quality. 

But who are the they who make it?  Who are the they that look at blogging as an extension of themselves?  Who are the they that continue to put post after post of quality work online even though their reader/follower numbers are not in the thousands like they dream of when they started their sites (and which is in all honesty a daunting goal for any blogthur regardless of who they may be or what their subject matter pertains to) but more likely hovers somewhere between 'a handful' to a hundred or perhaps 100 or 200 or maybe even 300?

If you are a member of RBU then the they are you because you joined RBU to not only offer another outlet where your work can be seen by people who might not otherwise stop by your site but also because you are passionate about what you consider to be a legitimate outlet for expression that is no less important than a library or a fine art museum.   What's more you know that here are RBU you are often challenged to 'think outside your personal blogging box.

Yes here at RBU:TGB it has always been our goal to offer our members not only an avenue for steering new readers towards their personal blog sites but also to challenge our members to explore their craft through our monthly themes because it can be daunting to be asked to focus their attention in a way that might be 180°different than they way they do on their own sites. This is a concept very few other sites employ which sets RBU apart from other group blogs.

Oh what wonderful submissions we’ve gathered in the past almost year, too, using this concept. However we do realize that our members would love the opportunity to shine the way they do on their personal sites which is why every so often we like to have a BLOGGER’S CHOICE month where we will accept submissions on just about any topic (so long as it stays within our general guidelines which are actually quite broad.)  Essentially it’s an UNthemed theme.

And this month, March 2011, is one of those months where we’ve decided to use the UNthemed theme of BLOGGER’S CHOICE which means that, quite frankly, visitors to RBU:TGB will see a unique variety of posts and won’t know until they find themselves at the site just what we’ll be offering up. And with that it in mind we hope that you’ll drop by as often as you can throughout the month to enjoy the outstanding work of our members and be inspired to drop by their blog sites as a result.

Here’s wishing you all a wonderful March!