Blog For You, Not For Them

While perusing Twitter, I came across a conversation that stemmed from one person posting a link to their latest blog post. You know, one of those automated “Hey, here’s a new blog post from me *insert wordpress link*”, nothing too original. I read the blog post, and it, too, was nothing original: a list of stuff going on in this person’s life [spoiler alert: they had brunch at a trendy restaurant]. But then at the end, the person asked readers what they wanted to read in this particular blog. And that’s where the conversation on Twitter started. Someone replied how they are in the same situation, where they don’t know “what people want to read”, so they don’t know what to blog. And other people chimed in with the same response. I found it fascinating, and yet, slightly disturbing.

I’ve blogged for a while, since…I have no idea…2003? I guess ten years isn’t really that long, but it does seem long in internet time, which is like dog years, where one year is an eternity. I started blogging on Xanga, and I used it as a place for me to write, and to say things…whatever came into my head. When I started, I didn’t care that people read it. I didn’t even know that people would read it. I just wrote there because…this is what I do. I’m a writer. I express my thoughts in writing. It’s a method of communication. I never had an agenda when it came to blogging. Whatever I felt like writing about, that’s what I did. And that’s how I’ve always viewed blogging. And that’s how I feel about tweeting. Whatever comes to mind, that’s what I say.

In the last ten years, I’m guessing a new type of personal blogger evolved. These bloggers were not writers, per se. They wrote, but they wrote on specific topics, for a specific audience, for one goal: to gain an audience. Let’s face it, many of these bloggers are attention whores. They’re doing it to gain notoriety, to get ad clicks, to get companies to give them free products that they can give away in a Rafflecopter promotion…which will get them more readers, and more attention, for more ad clicks, and more free products, et cetera, et cetera. I’m not going to say that this blogging model is wrong, because you can do whatever you damn well please in Internet-land. But I think it’s strange when someone wants to be both types of blogger: they want to be the person that expresses themselves in writing, yet they’re always worried about their audience, and wondering if those people are reading—and enjoyed—what they wrote. It reminds me of someone who lives their life based on what other people think of them. That’s no way to live. But many do live that way, and many people blog that way. For these types bloggers, they want to be real, but it’s a curated realness that they present. They are always aware of their audience, and realize they can never say or write anything that could cause a reader to stop reading their blog. This mimics someone with low self-esteem, who is always nice, because they are afraid if they act any other way, they will lose friends. That is definitely no way to live.

So what am I saying here? Blog because you want to, not because they want you to. Don’t think about your audience, because if you’re real, and passionate about what you’re writing about, and it’s evident in your posts, you will have no problem gaining an audience. And if you’re not confident that people are reading your blog posts, get a stat counter to look at page views, to make sure. Or post revealing pics of yourself, or give away a KitchenAid mixer using Rafflecopter. Or maybe end every single one of your blog posts with “So what do you think?” Ugh. I hate that.