I am sure having someone bring you up to speed on certain technical issues & topics would be helpful for 99% of all re.pros out there.

Anyone who participated in this crash course most definitely walked away a winner (and I am eating crow).

I am one of the 12 apprentices who just finished Project Blogger on Sunday. (Results to be announced August 1st.)

While you’re absolutely correct that good writing cannot be taught in a blogging contest, blogging and writing are not exactly the same skill set.

When I started Project Blogger, I was already a pretty good writer – or so people tell me (I won a writing contest when I was 17 and took Creative Writing and Journalism in high school, both of which have served me well over the years).

But blogging effectively is another matter.

What did I learn in Project Blogger? Obviously, not writing. I got a crash course and intense tutoring in a variety of blogging things, including a basic vocabulary that I didn’t have before (eg widget, blogosphere, technorati, pinging – just a few).

I learned from my mentor and from other participants about “link love”, about targeting posts, about how to get photos to use and how to shrink them so it doesn’t waste a day doing it.

Technical stuff.

Who will “win” Project Blogger? ALL of the Apprencices have WON Project Blogger because all have made a huge effort in a short period of time. It was a crash course. Like a language immersion program.

We apprentices of Project Blogger are not done learning. I’m still battling SEO issues. But I learned as much in 14 rapid, intense weeks of this contest as it might have taken me 2 years to learn otherwise.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

Thanks for visiting.

I am a first time visitor of your site and I love the graphics!

You are absolutely right that you can’t teach someone how to write, or even what to write, or even force them to write enough. There is certainly a skill to engaging people with the written prose.

I do have to take issue with you though on a number of points you made in your post. There is a lot to learn as a newbie blogger and with some coaching/teaching someone may be able to achieve where they want to be within several months instead several years.

If someone was born with a great voice, should they not take voice lessons?

You can absolutely coach someone on how to blog. How to write better headlines, how to highlight certain points by making them bold, how to interlink articles, or link to outside sources to illustrate a point, how to organize categories, how to add HTML to their sidebars how to stack articles with juicy keywords, how to engage or provoke comments with an article how to leave thoughtful comments on other blogs, how to research other blogs in their market. Just to name a few.

Most agents have never heard of digg, technorati, reddit, stumble upon, wordpress, rss feeds, sitemeter, feedburner, mybloglog, blogtopsites, vflyer.

We can effectively take a blogger (anyone no matter how well they write) and generate an enormous amount of start up traffic and interest within the first month.

So yes. It is true that content is king and Greg Swan should be writing for the New York Times, but for an average agent who would like to enter the blogosphere without spending months researching topics, a coach is exactly what they need.

I will add you guys to my reader and look forward to some more thought provoking articles.

Keep up the good work and make sure to follow the project blogger as we will continually track our progress.

Jason