So why are you still blogging?
Are you hoping to make money? Become famous? Gain followers? Fans? A book deal?
Are you blogging because you want to share your family with relatives scattered across the world? Are you blogging because you found a community with which you relate? Are you blogging because you need to vent about life, family, friends, kids, partners, exes, bosses, or other bloggers?
WHY are you blogging?
It was a question posed by former-NFL receiver Donald Driver at Disney’s Social Media Moms Conference this past weekend-and it sort of knocked me off my chair.
(The kids enjoying family time at the conference on Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland)
I haven’t thought about WHY I blog in such a very long time and it has changed over and over again.
At first I was blogging for something to do, to connect with other parents, to find my ‘tribe.’
Then I was blogging as an activist. Political posts ruled the day.
Then it was a smattering of parenting and politics and life.
Then I got sick…and everything changed.
I didn’t know what to blog for a long time. So I just kept people up to date on my health. Until I broke down and began blogging about just how hard it all can be, about just how affected the kids and my husband were by my illness. I began blogging for myself, to just get it out.
Driver spoke to the crowd this past weekend about the motivation behind our blog posts, our tweets, our Facebook posts, our photos. His message was so simple, yet one I fear I have forgotten in the past 10-years as the industry has grown. Are you using your voice for good?
Those of us who have been around the social media block have watched the metamorphosis. We started out as just hobbiest looking for community. Sharing our ups and downs like friends do. As our voices became more powerful some of us just kept doing what we’ve been doing all along, others took the $$$ path to try and cash in on their new found attention. Starting new sites, trying to bring in the big traffic numbers. ‘Monetizing’ was the word everyone loved.
Sure I put ads up on this blog, but I lost out on a lot of opportunities because I wouldn’t write sponsored posts on this site. For me, it just didn’t fit. It still doesn’t. This is my space to share and talk about my kids, my life…not products.
However, with Driver’s words still ringing in my ears, I am wondering where Queen of Spain blog goes from here. I want to make a difference. I want to help people. I want to continue to share the ups and downs of living with a chronic illness.
I am inspired to DO MORE with this space I’ve been given and have cultivated over the years. I’m inspired to make the most of what I’ve been given-and just asking myself the question this big ‘ol football player so easily stated really changed my mindset. WHY am I blogging?
I know the answer:
I’m blogging for myself. I’m blogging for you. I’m blogging to change the world we live in and hoping to bring others along for the ride.
I’m determined to bring back the magic in blogging and the honesty, the transparency, the REAL stories of life and love and loss. Not the ones conjured up for traffic, products, brands, or sponsors.
This space is where my soul and my heart connect with others and I give you all of me- the good and the bad. And I still believe there is a place for that in the industry.
Let’s get back to basics. Let’s get back to storytelling. Let’s get back to connecting with one another just for the sake of connecting, not because it’s required to fulfill a contract by a pr company.
Let’s get back to blogging.
*I was invited to attend the DSMM Celebration. I paid my own conference fees and received gifts during the conference. All opinions, experiences and thoughts are my own.
I’ve been on both sides: I have a blog (or 2 or 3) and I also contacted bloggers to review products.
At home, I write for me. My photo blog was a way for my mom to keep up with my photography while I was in college — that blog died when I dropped out. 😡 Now my husband and I are trying to start a personal blog so we feel like we have a connection to the outside world since my illness has made us such an insular little unit. (And yes, as marketing dorks, we do want to ‘monetize’ it and see what we can learn.)
At work, I contacted bloggers to review our products. I had a few criteria which I used to determine who to email: it HAD to fit with their blog and be something they would REALLY use. I got chewed out a lot for not sending pitches to everyone with a high PR and readership (including you, after I was found checking something on your blog); I stood my ground for a reason. As both a marketer and a reader, I HATE those regurgitated sponsored posts. Tell me what YOU think about my product. Some of the best feedback came from the bloggers.
On the other hand, I got unsolicited pitches from new bloggers wanting our product to sponsor them. While I wasn’t allowed to tell them to write about what they know & love (and that I’d be back next year with them at the top of my list), I really wanted to. One of my favorite bloggers discussed our skin cream in conjunction with her daughter’s dance competitions. Another apologized for being late to post because her kid needed stitches!
Sometimes I wish there was a better way to combine the two. If a parenting blog needs a way to potty train their kids, match them up with a product that can help in exchange for an honest review. I don’t want ‘sponsored content’ to be an advertisement; I want it to be a way to reduce expenses on both the bloggers and the companies.
…and with that being said, I crawl back to my unfinished hovel of a blog.
Perfect! I’m blogging to make a difference. Even if one person can relate to my story, find strength in my words, or shelter in their weakness then I have blogged for the right reason.
This line hit home so much for me…it made me tear up. “I’m blogging for myself. I’m blogging for you. I’m blogging to change the world we live in and hoping to bring others along for the ride.”
xoxo
Sometimes I just feel like I’m in old school ‘get off my lawn’ mode when it comes to blogging now. I want the old days back!
I enjoy your blog.
I’ve wanted to blog for a lot of different reasons, for almost all of the reasons you have. Now, it seems that so many successful blogs and bloggers have children as the backdrop. Being chronically ill kept us from having children. More and more it feels like something else that disconnects me from the rest of the world. I’m still working on how to live with it.
I honestly know of so many blogs that don’t have kids as the backdrop- you have a LIFE… that is worth blogging. As is what you wish to share about your illness.
I follow your blog because it offers a unique perspective that I personally would never be able to have.
but T1 why do YOU blog?
I dropped off from blogging last year and I have missed it. Oh my, I miss it. I miss wrangling words and my thoughts all into a piece that is read by few, but that is recorded for my kids to read someday. And somewhere, I got off the blogging train. Some of it is privacy. Some of it is simply getting out of the habit. Some of it is getting skeeved out by folks who seem to sell their souls for every click and spot of traffic.
I have wanted to jump back on the blogging train and I am still pondering as to how I want to approach it. As I consider this, I will keep in mind this particular bit you wrote “I’m blogging for myself. I’m blogging for you. I’m blogging to change the world we live in and hoping to bring others along for the ride.”
I will never have a huge audience, but I will always, at a minimum, have a few friends who read and even better, my children reading my words. And that, in the end, is enough.
Thank you, I needed to read this today.
And this! Especially THIS:
“I’m determined to bring back the magic in blogging and the honesty, the transparency, the REAL stories of life and love and loss. Not the ones conjured up for traffic, products, brands, or sponsors.”