Blogging Truths Be Told: Knowing Your “Why” Will Save Your Blogging Career

Why do you do what you do? A very simplistic sentence when looking at it with the naked eye. A remarkably complex sentence when you think of all the brain activity that goes behind its answer. 

In the world of blogging, the reasons people blog are numerous and fall along different points on the “why I blog” spectrum. There’s no way I can possible create a comprehensive list of all of them, but I’ll give you some of the reasons I’m aware of for why people blog. (Of course, my personal answer will be included in this list — from a combination of several bullet points, in fact.) Can you tell which reasons make up my blogging purpose?

Here are some of the reasons that people blog:

• Blogging creates a sounding board where you can express your views to interested parties on an international platform.
• Blogging provides a chronicling of your life (meant more for the individual writing it than for the people reading it). (May be thought of as journaling, even.)
• Blogging allows you to share information that might help others with a specific process or processes. (The process can be personal or professionally-related.)
• Blogging allows you to share information that might help others who are going through personal life journeys (where encouragement/inspiration is needed).
• Blogging is a way to earn income.
• Blogging provides a way to connect with others of like mind.
• Blogging provides a way to connect with people of different demographics, cultures, belief systems, socio-economic levels, and personal/professional aspirations and undertakings from all over the world.
• Blogging provides a way for a writer to practice his or her writing.
• Blogging provides a way for you to entertain others through your commentary.
• Blogging provides a way for you to inform and educate others through your commentary.
• Blogging helps the creative entrepreneur to content market his or her business’ products and services.
• Blogging provides a far-reaching impact with your content that could never be reached by distributing that same content on a one-on-one basis.
• Blogging provides a great way to create an accountability system that can assist the procrastinator with GETTING THINGS DONE. (Communicating goals you intend to accomplish with an audience helps hold you accountable when you lack the discipline to hold yourself accountable without external influences.)
• Blogging is FUN!
• Blogging is a therapeutic way to let out some steam that you may not feel as comfortable doing verbally.
• Blogging helps you to develop knowledge about a particular subject matter. (Who knows? You might even be seen as a subject matter expert because of the research needed to expound knowledge to your audience through your blog. Essentially, you learn as you blog.)
• Blogging allows you to present yourself to an audience without having to be face-to-face.
• Blogging provides the creative entrepreneur with a flexible working opportunity that can be done on his or her own time, at any location where a computer and the internet are located, and with whatever topic of interest he or she would like to convey to an audience. (In other words, blogging gives the blogger a lot of autonomy.) 
• Blogging builds up a content portfolio that can be presented to brands, companies, and professionals that you would like to do business with.
• Blogging provides a way to conduct market research from a real-life audience.

I just listed 20 blogging reasons for you, but I know that can’t be all of them out there. And since I didn’t have the opportunity to survey every blogger in existence and ask “why do you blog”, I’m just going to stop with the list I have thus far. But, I’d like for you to comment (if you’d like) and let me know if I’m missing your reason for blogging, or missing any reasons that you’ve heard other bloggers mention.

I’m just curious.

Blogging is a very worthwhile endeavor. And for the blogger who is seeking to be positively impactful with his or her messaging, we need you out here in the blogosphere. We need your voice, we need your encouragement, we need your inspiration, we need your knowledge, we need your relatability and to connect on a human level, we need your entertaining ways (humor and all), we need your guidance, we need your content.

So, if you remember from last week’s “Blogging Truths Be Told” post, I discussed a couple of ways to manage distractions when it comes to blogging. I talked about assigning yourself an accountability partner and I mentioned the importance of scheduling out your activities. Lastly, I discussed that knowing your “Why” for blogging is an important factor in managing distractions when in comes to your blogging career.

And why is the “Why” so important in this respect?

Well, knowing your “Why” is the most critical piece to your blogging puzzle. Time and time again, it will provide that binding glue that saves your blogging career, when you’re on the cusp of engaging in the most definitive result of distraction of all time — quitting altogether. 

When distractions can get you to quit something (never to return), they’ve won.

And there are so many distractions in blogging (aside from the usual suspects), such as not seeing audience growth as quickly as you’d like, putting a lot into your blog but not making money from your blogging efforts, receiving no feedback from your audience (helloooo – is anyone hearing me out there?), and having no help in your blogging efforts (going solopreneur) to name just a few.

So, what keeps you coming back for more blogging? What keeps you from ending your blogging career when you go for days . . . months . . . years without seeing the noticeable results you desire after giving the process a good old “blogging try” day-in and day-out? 

Hey, it’s probably your blogging “Why”. 

And you can have one or more reasons for why you blog. The minimum is one but there’s no ceiling. Have one or as many as you’d like. However, you’d better have at least one of those reasons be one that’s meaningful to YOU — at least one that’s BIGGER than all of the distractions, challenges, and less-than-stellar measurements of progress that blogging may present.