Blogosphere: Why Bother With a Blog?
Blogosphere: A series
Part One: Why Bother?
We’ll get into some (perhaps) sickening detail down the line, but for now let me submit to you that there are a number of reasons to create and manage a blog, and one reason not to.
Let me start with the simple—and negative—reason for blogging:
Everybody else seems to be doing it. OK, I get that. It does seem like a lot of people are blogging, but part of the reason it seems so is that you read blogs. What we pay attention to is what we see. It’s like that time you decided on a certain car you were going to buy, and once the decision was made, you started to see that model everywhere. It is selective consciousness.
The problem is that “…just because everyone else seems to be…” isn’t a good enough reason. A blog needs to be more than just a place to write things. There needs to be a reason for it. A goal. Something that the blog is really about.
Well, OK, there are blogs out there that are just people talking about their lives. Some of those blogs are fairly interesting, I suppose. But a blog about nothing will not draw the kind of readers you want. Unless you are blogging only for yourself (and if so, why bother?) or for your friends or families, you may be wasting your time.
This then , is my first challenge to you. Do you have a reason to write and support a blog?
More on this and other questions next time.