Jul 21 2008
Why Do You Blog?
I’m back in DC after a wonderful trip to San Francisco for BlogHer 08. (I’ll be posting some pictures and writing more generally about the trip later.) You can visit the BlogHer website and read live blogs of all the conference sessions if you’re interested. I highly urge you to attend one the conferences or ReachOut tour dates (I’m planning to go to the DC ReachOut) if you have the chance–they’re worth every penny. I had an amazing time and learned so much, but it’s great to be home!
As you probably saw on the site over the past few days, I was an official live blogger for three conference sessions, one of which was “Building Traffic via Content and Community“. The session was incredibly informative and thought-provoking, and I wanted to talk a bit more about it today. One of the first questions the moderator (Elise of Simply Recipes) posed to the audience was “Why do you blog?”
Er.
Um.
Because everyone else is doing it?
Seriously–I don’t know about you, but I had never asked myself that question before. I’ve given a great deal of thought to what I blog ABOUT (personal development, career, finding your purpose, body image and disordered eating), to the kind of message I want to communicate to my readers (you can do it!), to the way my website looks (snazzy new redesign), but I had never asked myself why I’m blogging in the first place.
Elise asked the question because bloggers often set a goal for themselves of increasing traffic. If you were to google “increase blog traffic”, you’d nearly half a million hits focused on the multitude of tricks and tools you can employ to drive readers to your blog. But to what end? For what purpose?
One of the most common answers bloggers give to that question is “to make money”. More traffic = more clicks = more ad revenue = $$$$. OK. Fair enough. That makes sense. But in the vast universe that is the blogosphere, only a small percentage are lucrative enough to serve as a sole source of income. Making it big requires superb content, prolonged growth over several years, and more than a little bit of luck.
What’s more, Heather Armstrong of Dooce (who, by the way, seems totally cool and like someone I’d really enjoy drinking margaritas with) spoke at the closing session about the level of commitment and the amount of time it takes in order to maintain financially successful blog. She routinely spends 10-12 hours per day (every day–not just Monday through Friday) on her blog. With the exception of a few guest blogged entries, Heather personally writes every post. She reads every email and comment she gets, and that includes some unbelievably vicious hate mail. She monitors the participants in her ad network to ensure that she believes what’s being advertised on her site. She maintains the technical integrity of the site. It is, she stressed, A LOT of work.
I don’t know about you, but that rules out money as my primary reason for blogging. That’s just not what I want to do.
After some thought, I identified the following as reasons why I blog:
- To help myself. By focusing my blog on personal development–which includes (for me, at least) finding my purpose, translating it into a career, building good habits, getting rid of bad ones, improving my body image, and kicking the ass of disordered eating–I actually wind up working through a lot of my own issues and problems.
- To help others. I really, truly want to help people. I want to inspire and motivate people (especially women). I want to see them achieve their goals. I want to help them find their purpose and live their dreams (hence the new tagline).
- To build a community. I want to create a community of women that help, motivate, encourage, and inspire others.
- To become a better writer. It’s pretty simple–the more you write, the better you write. Elise suggested looking back at some of your early blog entries for an illustration of this. It’s so true!
I could focus on increasing my blog traffic to support my goals of helping others and building a community, but after some reflection, I’ve realized that it’s actually more rewarding to me to have a dedicated (if smaller) readership that I deeply care about. Building traffic just isn’t that important to me.
That said, I’ll definitely be making some changes to my blog based on Elise’s session. I’m going to use the “more” tag instead of having the full text of long posts on my main page. I’ll probably declutter by removing some items from my sidebars. I may reduce my frequency of posting from 5 times per week to 3-4 to enable me to devote more time to writing quality articles (what are your thoughts on that, by the way?). I’ll use more images and photos. I’d like to launch a few community-building blog events and initiatives. (Any ideas, anyone?) I want to make my blog BETTER, not BIGGER.
What about you–why do you blog? What are your goals for your blog?
Good post, Jen!
Well, I blog because it helps me learn about myself, have others give insight and opinions on things that matter to them or that resonates in their person.
My goals: I want a loyal, following not necessarily a big one because I don’t believe this will be what I primarily do but something I use as an addition besides, I like to feel a kinship with the people who come to see me as well as with the people I read (which is why I typically stay away from the mainstream blogs).
When it comes to events, what are you talking about exactly? Did you want to have events linking several blogs together on one topic, having guest blog series? I love blog carnivals maybe something utilizing that concept on a smaller scale?
I like people who use images but they can be distracting if it isn’t done tastefully, people can go overboard. I tend to be more about the concept/content more than what the pictures they used…but that’s just me.
Blogging is actually really rare for people around my age (recently 21) but I recently started a blog to help raise money. I’m running the Chicago Marathon for Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Speaking of which, if you’d like to donate, I have a sponsor’s page for fellow bloggers!
But my blog has completely added another dimension to my running and I have found such a great community here online!
Welcome back!
I read up some of the live blog sessions and I think they were great! I especially like the naked blogging, which leads me to your question. I blog because I enjoy the interaction of the community and it’s a way for me to get to better know and understand myself. I can write about issues and sometimes seeing things in print makes it easier to see it in a different light…the same can be said when a reader is able to point out a different point of view I had previously overlooked.
I don’t know about the ‘large’ following, it’s kind of nice to have ‘close’ group of people I follow and vice versa.
~K
I blog:
-For the outlet: I can talk about stuff on the blog that I can’t/won’t/am not ready to discuss IRL.
-For the writing: Starting in 5th grade, I was quite the budding little writer. Once I got serious with WH, all of my cute teenage angst dried up and so did my writing. It made me sad to think that I wasn’t writing anymore. Good or bad, it’s a major part of my life that was constantly on hold until blogging.
-For the community: I’ve noticed that most of my friends IRL are friends of opportunity. We may have some stage and age commonalities, but blogging seemed like a really attractive way to connect with people that I have more in common with, personality wise. Also? I was jealous of other bloggers. Their comments, their commenters, their sense of community. Who can witness that for too long without wanting it for themselves?
Sure, I’d love, LOVE to join the ranks of Dooce and Pioneer Woman. If it happens, great. I can’t filter who I am or what I’m about, though, to garner traffic. In reality, if you look at either blog, I kind of think that’s why they’re so big. They are authentic. If I get there someday, great, and I’m not above tweaking things to increase my traffic, but I’m not tweaking “me” to get big.
My blog began as the urgent need to vent about something that was romantically painfull. I am not sure what it will become but I am fairly confident that it continues, if for no other reason, because it is cheaper than therapy.
I first started blogging to keep track of things going on in my life that didn’t involve paper. I tend to be a keeper of every little thing and after nearly 50 years there are a lot of “every little things”. I started slowing going through papers tossing many of what I thought were valuable at some point papers and put some of the info on my blog. At some point the blog became more of a place for me to interact and it has recently become a place for me to reflect.
I enjoy reading your blog. Cannot remember how I found you but the point is, I did. Thanks.
* to sort out my thoughts. when i get stressed or sad or angry, etc. my mind tends to go in about a million different directions. i picture it as a merry-go-round of thoughts that spins faster and faster. i can see the thought or feeling or activity that i want to focus on, but i can’t quite grab it every time that horse comes around. blogging somehow helps me to slow down the spinning and really focus on one thing at a time.
* to connect with other women. initially i was looking for women that i thought were Like Me…in other words: single, mid-thirties, looking for Mr. Right, trying to figure out what the heck it is that i want to do with my life. as i went looking for the Like Me’s, i found that there are a ton of women out there like me that don’t meet any of those criteria i had in my head. they’re funny and smart and even though they might not be right where i am in life, they’ve been there or they’re smart enough to figure out what it’s like to be here…or they’re really good at faking it!
* to rant and rave or say whatever i want. in person, i’m really bad at telling people what i’m feeling or thinking. i always feel like no one is interested in what’s on my mind and i have trouble maintaining eye contact and focusing on what i’m saying. but in a blog, i figure if someone doesn’t want to read what’s going on in my life, they can just move on to something else. it’s purely their choice to keep reading or not, and that frees me to say whatever is on my mind and in my heart at that moment.
* to get other people’s thoughts and insight on what goes on in my world. when i was engaged not long ago, i would often read through the boards on a popular wedding website and sometimes post questions of my own, on anything from invitation ideas to the big issues my fiance and i were fighting about. i found that it was really helpful to get someone else’s perspective on a situation or idea, as i often over-complicate things and/or can’t see the forest for the trees (maybe those are the same thing, i’m not sure!).
one thing i’ve noticed about my blogging is that i crave it more when things aren’t going well for me in one way or another. and while it’s important for me to blog during those times, i also need to write when i’m feeling good…either to talk about and be thankful for the things that are going well, or to take the opportunity to work on other things that maybe aren’t as urgent the rest of the time. i have to teach myself to be aware of that. having a regular list of blogs that i read helps remind me of that, too.
Excellent post, Jen! I’m feeling you on the “better, not bigger” thing. I’ve been blogging for almost 6 years, and if I really cared about expanding my traffic so drastically I would have made an effort to do so way before now. I’m proud that I write for BlogHer, and I’m proud that I have a dedicated group that follows my personal blog on a regular basis. Like you, I write because I want to make my writing better (and HELL YES I can see a difference from how I used to write years ago to how I write now).
I blog because I need to do it. There is a lot of stuff which needs to be said, for several reasons. There is a lot more stuff which needs to be shared. This is, by far, the best platform.