Reasons Why I Blog
One of the quirks of the Web is that ideas can flow back and forth from one place to another, and pick up impetus along the way. Sometimes they get expanded into an organized effort.
A blog meme, from a Greek word for memory, is one of these organized efforts and often happens by people sharing their thoughts or creative energies in some way after being tagged by another blogger, and then tagging others to participate.
I’ve been tagged by Michael Jensen of SoloSEO in a blog meme that has people providing five reasons why they blog and then tagging five others.
These are my five reasons why I blog:
1. As a chance to pay it forward
The web is a tremendous source of information and inspiration; much of my knowledge of SEO and the Web has been learned from people taking time and making efforts to share what they know through selflessly written tutorials and frequently asked questions pages.
Many authors of those words have written them anonymously, so to thank them I try to help others in the same spirit, and if I can help them, then maybe they will help others.
2. As an opportunity for self-discovery of interests
When first setting out to blog, a frequent question might be, “What do I blog about today.” After a while, unanticipated and surprising subjects may find you. At a local blog I’m writing upon, for instance, I’ve started paying a lot more attention to the architecture of the buildings in town.
Yesterday, one post became the history and evolution of lunch wagons into “dining car” like buildings and then into diners after I noticed the original manufacturer’s label above the door at my corner diner. Last week, a historical marker in front of a nearby church had me exploring Romanesque Revival Ecclesiastical Architecture.
I’m anticipating visiting the local Recorder of Deeds office in the near future to trace back who owned some historical places in town. One is a schoolhouse that three signers of the Declaration of Independence attended when they were growing up.
3. As a way of meeting people and building community
I really enjoy it when someone posts about or leaves a comment on something I’ve written, or sends me an email about it, or gives me a call. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by people coming up to me at a conference and telling me that they read my blog.
Blogs give you a chance to share ideas with people from around the globe, and exchange experiences with them. I’ve had the chance to speak at a few conferences because of topics I’ve written about here, and to visit California and Las Vegas and other places, and meet people from around the world.
In exploring the world with your blog, and reaching out to others, you run into the chance of having others reach out to you. I wrote about the premiere of a movie made by some local filmmakers last week, and one of the directors left a comment upon my post this morning, inviting me to see the movie and offering me a complimentary ticket for it.
I wrote a post a few years back about the musical remix culture in Brazil and the Brazilian Minister of Culture sent me an email thanking me for my post.
I’ve been sharing some ideas with a number of other bloggers on different topics, and learning from them and enjoying their successes. There may be two people in the small town that I live within whom I could hold an in-depth conversation with on SEO and internet marketing, and both of them found me through my blog.
4. As an impetus for writing
I’ve been fascinated by the written word for as long as I can remember, and spent a great deal of my youth with my nose between the pages of a book. I’ve wanted to be a creator of words as much as a consumer, and blogging gives me a chance to put some thoughts together into sentences, into essays, and perhaps into more than just blog posts someday.
The challenge of finding material that interests me, and might interest others and attempting to present it in a manner which captures the essence of the material and yet still makes it accessible for others is rewarding when I feel that I’ve done it well.
5. As a chance to learn
The Web is an opportunity for collaborative learning, and I’ve been able to learn from others, and from my own efforts in creating material for my blog. I enjoy going through patent filings from the search engines and trying to put the ideas expressed in them into language that others might understand, and in the process of doing so, I learn a lot myself.
I learned a few years back in an internet literacy class that I taught at a local community college, that a teacher can learn as much as his or her students when he or she sets out ideas for others. Many of the things that I write about in my blog end up in processes for working upon Web pages, and in ideas that I can try out on personal sites.
I could possibly go on with a number of other reasons, but I’m interested in hearing from some other folks. Here are five people whom I’m tagging with this meme:
- Barry Welford
- Eric Hebert
- Joe Dolson
- Yuri Filimonov
- Sophie Wegat
I blog as a chance to practice seo and the English language. Also to start building a profile online and meet people interested in the subject I want to know about. Of course it helps my resume too.
Those all sound like great reasons.
Funny, I try to read a few seo and design blogs in languages other than English, some from people I’ve met and talked to and some from people that I haven’t, to learn more about those languages, and a little about other cultures, and to try to keep in touch with what they are doing.
-same here, and for that i thank you!
~kimber
Thank you, Kimber. 🙂
What I love about your blog, Bill, is that when people comment on your posts, you use that as the opportunity to teach more about the subject of your post. So, it’s as though the initial topic is the first part of the lesson and it is followed by a helpful Q&A session where some of the finer points get treated. I really like that!
Keep blogging, Bill. We all need you!
Miriam
Thanks Miriam.
I really enjoy it when people take the time to read, and come up with questions. It’s a blog, but it’s also a conversation.
I write a number of posts that are similar, too – when I need something, but can’t find it, and I do some research that might be helpful, I may make a post about it so that I can return to it later, and point people to it if they ask about that topic.
A recent post was about a social network workshop at the WWW2007. I read a couple of the papers to be presented, and want to read some more of them. I was also interested in learning more about the authors. So, in my post, I linked to the papers, included abstracts so I could remember what the papers are about and let others know also, and linked to the sites of as many of the authors as I could, so that I could investigate some of their other papers.
The blog post was inspired by self interest, but I think that it might be helpful to other people who are interested in social networks and tagging.
“people taking time and making efforts to share what they know through selflessly written tutorials”
Several sites kindly linked to an article I wrote about supplemental listings (I prefer not to link to it here, but its ranked first for “supplemental hell”, a long tail almost no one runs). Though I’d like to say I wrote that selflessly (I don’t have a single ad on that page) I really wrote it for myself to use it as a checklist to diagnose my own sites. I did make my article public, but I’m not even sure that was a selfless act because I keep most of the stuff I do available online (just out of sheer laziness).
In my niche, people (including myself, on occasion) carbon copy other successful sites to grab a piece of the pie. Though I think not thinking about monetization at all isn’t a great idea when I got bills to pay, I believe the best long term policy – for me at least – is when I desperately need something but can’t find what I need, build it myself, then share it with the rest of the world.
Thanks bill nice reason to blog. I blog because i want to be a part of the whole world, i want to make a global profile, i want to build a community, i want to share my knowledge and want to learn, i want to help people, and i don’t blog to make money, though i know money will flow one day if i love my readers
Hi Alamin,
Thanks for taking the time to share your reasons for blogging. One of the best aspects of having a blog is that it gives us a chance to grow, and our readers a chance to grow with us.
You have the same reasons I have! Blog is a great way to learn, meet people and make money!
Hi Marijan,
Funny, I didn’t really include “making money” as one of the reasons why I blog, but blogging has lead to a lot of opportunities that I otherwise wouldn’t have had.
I blog now. When I first got the opportunity to do it, I didn’t want to. Today I can’t even remember the reasons behind my reluctance to take over the company blog. Moreover – I can’t imagine my life without it.
Hi Dan,
I think I enjoy blogging now even more than ever before, and I’ve been doing it for almost 10 years (not all here). Sadly, I think there are a lot of business blogs where their owners look at it as a chore rather than an opportunity.
Hi Bill,
I never really thought about the reasons why people start blogging but your blog did make a very interesting read. I started blogging because I wanted to share the knowledge that I have acquired over the years.I am passionate about online marketing and it gives me immense pleasure to write about it, and in the process if it helps out people, nothing like it!
Hi Ranjana,
Thank you. One of the funny things that I learned about sharing information like that is that it helps you learn things better as well, by forcing you to take the time to formulate your thoughts and words in a way that other people can understand.