Introduction by a Thanet business blogger

My Name is Matt and I am a small business owner from Thanet. I have been blogging for a long time but have done little to address the unique needs and issues of doing business in an economically deprived district. In this blog I will be focusing on successful blogging in Thanet.

The possible meanings or marks of success are as many and varied as the people you might ask. For this reason I will define success as having a large readership or an active community as the base line of success for a blog. Success in business is clearer: creating and sustaining viable economic activity - something not so easy to do within Thanet.

The Thanet blogging and website landscape is filled with as many derelict and white elephant sites as the district itself. My aim is to focus on the issues that lead to blog abandonment. Specifically I am to address the issues of making money from blogging (something that I do and enjoy doing).

The wikipidea says of Thanet that it is "...a local government district of Kent, England which was formed under the Local Government Act 1972, and came into being on 1 April 1974. It occupies the area known as the Isle of Thanet and is governed by Thanet District Council. The main towns in the district are Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs."

The same wikipidea article also makes the following claims about the status of our tiny isle. From experience I can tell you that much of this is true. Given these facts how we can prosper is going to be a prime question for this blog.

• Life expectancy is increasing but on average is less than for England
• People on means-tested benefits: 21,400
• Children in low-income households: 6,800
• Teenage pregnancies are high compared to the England average
• Violent crime is more frequent in Thanet than in England
• Estimated smoking rates are high as are death rates from smoking
• Early deaths from cancer are higher than the England average
• Healthy eating, physical activity, and adult obesity are similar to the national average
• Binge drinking is below the national average
• Higher than average number of people admitted to hospital for alcohol-specific conditions
• Higher than average rate of diabetes
• Higher than average rate of mental health problems

We businessman that choose to stay and fight the desire to run from here screaming must work hard to prosper for and with Thanet. As a people group we Thanetarians are mentally, emotionally and spiritually poor suffering from the effects of countless poor or wrong choices and a now ingrained attitude within our "leaders". The demographic (audience range) or our isle is a large part single and young mothers, the depressed, the unemployed and the technologically illiterate.

Unemployment and technological illiteracy is not the fault of the person but a problem for us all. I will be addressing ways we can help Thanet overcome this barrier and what we as business people could and should be doing to improve the economic future of Thanet not in big ways but in many little and over looked ways. I will also be asking hard questions.

Finally as a service to my fellow Thanet bloggers I will be addressing general issues of blogging. This will include technical and practical things we as bloggers can do to make it easier for those in Thanet (with Internet access) to engage with us. I will also address issues of earning from your blog and the moral and ethical questions that you will encounter.

I hope in all this to use local and specific examples rather than the usual blogging rote of "world famous" and thus irrelevant and unknown topic specific bloggers. Not that there is anything wrong with topic specific blogging but everything that is good in Thanet must be encouraged to the very limit of possibility if we are to foster growth. As such I will be maintaining special pages of topical links but more on that when the time comes.