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A Blogger's Musings Are Never Done

CHICAGO — Meet Erin Bradley: She's a professional blogger.

As editor of search engine marketing agency Reprise Media's SearchViews.com, she runs a daily blog covering search, emerging technology, advertising technology, RSS and blogs. The blog was relaunched in January, about six months after its debut.

“I think it's been a benefit to just get our name out there,” Bradley said. “It's a growing company, and it's also to establish Reprise Media as the thought leader in the search engine marketing space.”

The site at www.searchviews.com is run out of Reprise's office in New York. Part of the content is reporting on news, events and conferences like Ad:tech Chicago. Another part is long-view opinion pieces by staff or peers. Bradley covers daily news and updates the blog.

The site also links to popular blogs like Yahoo Blog, Google Blog, MSN Blog, Ask Jeeves Blog, John Battelle, Charlene Li, Fred Wilson, Jeremy Zawodny and Traffick. And there's the obligatory link to publications that cover the space, including DM News.

Bradley, who has the sassy air of a dot-comer, is doing double duty at Ad:tech. She is filing for her blog, but also for Ad:tech's as well.

SearchViews.com attracts a unique monthly readership in the thousands, Bradley claims. No hard numbers, please. Those visiting include Reprise clients, prospects, other bloggers and “hopefully, employees of Reprise.” The site offers RSS feeds. And the blog accepts no ads.

“The sales and editorial are kept separate,” she said. “We'd rather have people think, 'Wow, this is smart. Who wrote this?' than read a canned sales pitch, which they'll probably ignore.”

When readers respond, it's usually to spark a debate on content on the blog.

“It's kept pretty civil,” she said, “but I've seen other blogs where it's not.”

Bradley's journey to blogging was a detour of sorts. She started school intending to major in journalism, but she switched to human resources because the job market at that time was tough. She worked for the first years out of college as a dot-com recruiter.

“It was an area that was booming in 1999,” she said.

Bradley then made a lateral move as a copywriter within the dot-com Fry. She joined Google in 2003, where she was a creative maximizer, writing the ads on Google to help clients get the most out of the ads. She left Google last year. Why?

“My parents asked that, too,” Bradley said. “The work was much more data-oriented [rather] than being creative for a copywriter. I also had a lot of freelance opportunities going on at the time. And, yes, my [Google] stocks were vested.”

She freelanced a bit before Reprise contacted her off the world's largest job board, Monster.com.

So what do people say when Bradley tells them she is a blogger?

“A lot of people think it's an unusual way to make a living,” she said. “There's also that smug 'well-that-won't-last-long' attitude. But I think the basics behind blogging are good writing and good reporting, and those are skills that you can apply to a number of jobs and be a success.”

Mickey Alam Khan covers Internet marketing campaigns and e-commerce, agency news as well as circulation for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters

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