**I imagine the post title doesn’t have the same effect if you don’t have the right image and song stuck in your head to go with it. Let me help with that:
Yeah, I *love* Eddie K. LOVE!
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Ahem. Now that that’s out of the way, what was I talking about? Oh, right…what are we blogging for?
I have seen a lot of posts over the last few weeks about how to best blog. How do we build audience and how do we give that audience what they want? How do we get our blogs out there in the world so we have like sixteen gazillion followers? Because we all know that followers is what this whole blogging thing is about, right?
Um, wrong.* While a blog is a great way to built an online platform, I personally think that is not the way we should be looking at our blogs. We should be blogging because we love to blog, not because someone somewhere said it helps to have one. We should write what we want and what we love and what interests us without trying to tailor our posts to the people reading the blog. I mean, I am flattered that y’all are following me on this journey and reading my blog (also, kudos to every one of you for actually putting up with my rambling), but if I were to try to write every post with my readers in mind, I would freeze up, go crazy, and stop blogging altogether.
Like everything else we do on our journey, if it is not fun it is not worth spending time on.** So have fun with your blogs! Take all those blogging rules that are floating around the interwebs and throw them out the window. Blog for you because you love it.
After all, what are we blogging for?
*Unless, of course, you are a paid blogger. In which case, yeah, finding followers (and more importantly, finding followers who will use the advertisements) is kinda a big deal.
**Okay, okay…there are things in life that are unpleasant but we have to do them anyway. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about things we choose to do. Don’t choose to do something you don’t enjoy just because it is seen as cool or glamorous, or because everyone else is doing it, or for any other reason.
11 Comments
Yes! I TOTALLY agree with this!
I know! Right after I posted this, I read your post about only doing what you like to do in social networking. Great minds….or something like that.
This is a very good question and it comes to mind on a regular basis at this point in my blogging career(hobby). Right now, both of my blogs have a number of posts that don’t get comments and even my book giveaway has had a much smaller response than I’d expected. That has made me wonder why I’m blogging. Then I get another idea for a blog post and can’t wait to write it. Like today, I got an idea for the blog where I’m holding the giveaway and hope to write the post tonight. I do it, blogging, in part for myself. It’s nice to write out my thoughts on writing and to put to words details of my own writing, even if there seems to be no one reading (or at least responding).
Great post!
Thanks!
Yeah, I think we have all had those moments where we wonder if anyone is reading our blogs and if we are just writing to nobody. But in the end, those of us who love to blog keep on writing anyway!
This just reminded me that I had every Live CD on my old laptop, and lost them all when it crashed
If it makes you feel better, I had them all too, but they were all lost in the great CD raid of 2006. *sigh*
scientifically proven to attract Ninjas, hobgoblins, and fake apple-flavored candies. I am not especially fond of any of those things, plus the ninja slayings get so dang messy. You try cleaning ninja off your ceiling every day! Ugh. But really the worst is the fake-apple flavored candy. Those things are an affront to apples around the world. Either way, my personal preference for reading your blog is because it is an extension of you, a person that I love, and not an extension of a corporate entity, or an incorporeal entity, for that matter. Who likes blog ghosts? Not this guy. Hmmmm. This is getting a little weird. I am going to stop now.
Ugh. Fake apple-flavored candies?! I didn’t know that was a side effect of blogging! Ick.
know, right?! Who the heck thought that those would be an adequate replacement for actual apple? You might as well slap some mud on a stick and say “Here! Apple trees grow in dirt, so it’s pretty much the same thing.” If ever a monumental punch-in-the-face was to be administered to a human, that person would be it. Problem is, they’d think it tasted like apples.
Hey Rachel,
Sorry I’m a little late to the game on this one – just back from my self-imposed blogging, Twittering, FBing hiatus…. And it was AMAZING. I learned a few things while gone (which I’ll blog about later), and I got so much editing done. My blog was starting to feel like a job, which I don’t want to happen. My attitude has thus been adjusted.
Good! I am glad that your week off was good for you!