The great thing about a blogroll is you can make it anything you want it to be: a resource guide, directory of your favorite websites or blogs, or list of blogs on the same topic as yours. Your blogroll can be tiny or extensive, although these days professional bloggers and blog designers appear to favor short over long. ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse even killed his after getting too many requests to be on it.

An interesting blogroll is an invitation to readers to link to material that’s related to what you do. It can also be an enticement for readers who normally check out your blog on an RSS feed to actually click over and visit the site.

Which is what I hope WordCount subscribers will do today, after they hear I’ve revamped my blogroll. It has a couple new categories, including one for online writers groups – based on guest blog post on The Social Writer I did recently on my favorite online writers’ hangouts – and one for professional writers’ associations. I also split the resources section into resources for writers and resources for my tech and business reporting.

I’d love people to suggest more online writers’ groups, professional organizations and writers’ resources to add to the lists.

I’d also like to hear from writers who blog – how do you prefer being listed in other writers’ blogrolls, by your name or your blog’s name? I prefer being listed by my blog’s name – gotta build the brand – but what about other people?

If you’re new to blogging here’s some basic advice on how to start a blogroll from Blogging Basics 101.