I absolutely agree that blogging about a subject that interests you will make you more informed about that topic than you could ever expect to be. Thinking up topics for posts means immersing and challenging yourself on a daily basis.

In some ways, I think blogging is superior to bricks-and-mortar lectures since the onus is on you to take a stand and form an opinion instead of listening to and absorbing the opinions of others.

It’s also a fabulous way to display who you are. People whom you want to impress or influence or sell to can get a peek into your mind—how you think, how you express yourself. A blog has more credibility and power to impress than, say, a resume because of its immediancy. You can’t “fake it” day after day (or, if you can, then you’re really good!).

The blog is you.

Conversely the biggest obstacle for a blog writer is being entertaining enough, and/or informative enough, to capture an ongoing audience.

Launching a blog and cajoling one’s friends and business associates to read it, is becoming the modern version of asking people to look at your vacation photos.

Blogging is great in that it’s low barrier-to-entry and meritocratic. Any schmo can start a blog and, with effort, break into the tier of the top visited blogs.

But 99% of bloggers won’t achieve that. There are only so many hours in a day that people will give to reading blogs. It’s the Attention Economy. Time is more scarce than money. Even if blogs capture eyeballs from magazines, newspapers, other activities — in the end there are only so many hours in the day.

That said — as you/Ryan pointed out — having a blog is one way to signal your professional commitment. Simply having made the effort to create and maintain a blog might make you stand out to a potential employer, even if you have no readers.

But the whole “read my blog” thing can get a little trying.

There’s one email list I’m on, for a certain professional group, where 50%+ of all the list members have professional blogs. In the list discussion they regularly slip in plugs for their blogs. Nevertheless — there’s no sign of ongoing readers on any of their blogs.

It gives me a negative vibe, actually. There’s something that starts feeling unpleasantly narcissistic about repeated subtle begging for people to pay attention to you and your blog.

Attention whoring isn’t attractive in children, and it’s not attractive in adults or bloggers either.

However, I plead caution when it comes to the overzealousness of bloggers and overnight “experts”. Expertise is something that is earned through many years of careful discipline, humility, patience, and diligence. It is quite a trivial task to be able to write like an expert when compared to the mountainous achievement of actual expertise in any venture worth pursuing. I encourage twentysomethings to respectfully question the authority of the status quo in order to carve their own path through their young lives, but the value of experience cannot be overlooked.

Regardless, your insights are interesting enough to keep me reading, and keep me thinking. You are certainly on the path to experthood in the realm of blogging!