Thinking about blogging.
Talk about an obvious choice of topic; but then again, it's not really something many of us think about at all. We just do it.
You may have once given careful thought as to why you started blogging. In fact, I'm quite sure that you gave it serious thought. You went through the pros and cons, and had some very good reasons for starting your blog, and its ultimate goals.
Some of those reasons may have been for business purposes. You may have wanted to raise the profile of your website. Perhaps you wanted to gain an initial online presence, and blogging provided the best avenue. Possibly you wanted to start a conversation with current and potential customers and clients for relationship marketing purposes. Maybe the SEO power of blogs appealed to you, as you strive for higheer search engine rankings.
Some of you might have started a blog for altruistic reasons. You wanted to share ideas and information on your area of expertise with others. Perhaps the driving force for you was simply to get your voice heard by others. The topics might have varied from business, to sports, to politics, to personal thoughts.
Regardless of the reason for starting a blog, and I have mentioned only a few, you did think about them at one time.
Right?
You probably don't think about them anymore, however.
If you have been blogging for any length of time, you may have forgotten your original reasons for beginning your blog. In fact, I would be quite surprised if the reasons you continue to write are mcuh different from your original blogging goals.
Let's use six months of steady posting as our example. I know that many of you have been writing your blog posts for a much longer time than half a year. Some of you have even had several blogiversaries already.
In any case, it makes sense to sit down and ask yourself the following question:
Why do I write my blog anyway?
Be brutally and entirely honest with yourself. Even if you did start the blog to share ideas, and it has evolved into a purely money making or business gathering site, that's just fine. There is nothing wrong with earning your living directly or indirectly from your blog. In fact, I encourage and support the concept of blog revenue completely.
The important thing is to examine your blog and see if your blogging goals have shifted. If they have, and that is a highly likely event, then your posting topics might require some tweaking as well.
You may even find that your readership has shifted over time, from one group of visitors, to an entirely different one. If your visitors are different from your original traffic, it's important to write posts that appeal to your newer readership. If you want some previous readers to return, perhaps a few posts of interest to them might be in order.
You will never know what you are blogging about, until you examine your reasons for blogging, and determine your ultimate goals for the blog.
It's time to think about your blog.
Where is your blog now?
Where do you want your blog to go in the future?
Only you can decide that direction. Be sure to keep your past, current, and potential future readership in mind.
Think about blogging today.
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