Are You Getting The Most Out Of The Experience?
Yesterday’s post stimulated some serious thought on my part about the whole blogosphere experience. Those of us who are really into the social media experience across several platforms and genres tend to have an innate finger on the pulse of the culture and reasons (both spoken and unspoken) behind the relatively new universe of blogging. After all, it’s a new frontier that’s barely about 13 years old, the same age as my son.
But what about you? Why blog? What’s your specific purpose? What’s the point?
It’s within our human make-up to have purposes behind the actions we take, the experiences that we choose, even the things we ignore or pass by.
So if you’re going to blog, what’s in it for you? What do you get out of it? Do you blog for yourself, writing what you want? Or do you blog for others, trying to write what readers want?
What is your vision? What are your goals? Fun? Education? Controversy? A writing exercise? A journal? A journey? To make friends? Network? Sell your products? Find yourself? Stave off boredom? A place to whine? A creative expression? Humor? What?
Do you expect visitors? Do you simply fling words out to the Universe at large, hoping they might come back to you in some new form? Or do you blog to find your voice?
Why do you do it?
Because…
it seems to me that if you’re going to blog…
if you decided you wanted to jump into this world…
then you must have at some level hoped you would connect with others.
Whether your purpose is kinship or contention, somewhere you probably wished, or expected, that your words might be read…
that those words might actually impact someone…
somewhere out there.
And no matter your purpose, no matter what you think you might get out of it personally, content and delivery is what will determine whether your words are ever really heard. Yet to be successful, you must have the former to go with the latter.
Some thoughts to ponder until tomorrow….
Crochet Liberation Front:
Aberrant Crochet (TM) 
Great topic to think about. Blogging has been an interesting journey for me because I only got into it as a professional gig that evolved naturally from other freelance writing I was doing. I didn’t even read blogs until I got that first job and then had to dive in headfirst to learn what blogs were all about. Over the years I’ve blogged professionally for many, many sites and businesses only to be coming full circle now and blogging for myself in both a personal and professional capacity.
I think you make a key point that some sort of interaction with others is the underlying motivation behind all blogs (otherwise we’d just keep private journals, right?) It’s definitely very important to me with my blogs. I love sharing stories – mine and others – and blogging allows me to do that in so many different ways. Whatever else it may mean to me, it certainly means that.
Yeah, the point I’m going to get to tomorrow is about that desire to interact and how it’s not too unlike courtship – if you wish for a quality relationship, you have to invest in it.