“Why do you blog?”
I get the question a lot. So here’s a list. I originally wanted to come up with 99 reasons, but 44 is where I ended up.
(If you have serious additions to the list please comment and I’ll approve. I’d still like to get to 99, and if I do I’ll repost the whole list as “99 reasons we blog”).
- It improves my writing
- It forces me to learn how use new social media tools
- It occasionally gives me a reason to fiddle with some HTML code
- It’s practice creating a written end product faster
- It’s a chance to experiment
- It’s a chance to work on my storytelling every day
- It’s a discipline
- It’s a megaphone
- It’s challenging to build my own tribe, from scratch
- It makes me to be more aware of and informed about topics that interest me
- It makes me a contributor to a community I respect
- It’s a chance to go from observation to synthesis every day
- It’s a diary of where my thinking is every day – and over time a reflection of the arc of where I am in my life
- It’s a platform…who knows where that will go?
- It’s free
- It’s become a daily habit, and I’d miss it if it were gone
- It makes my mom proud
- It’s fun to have people email me interesting things and say, “You might want to blog this.”
- It teaches me…about people, about writing, about technology, about storytelling.
- It’s an act of letting go – to take an insight and put it out in the world, asking for nothing in return
- I felt like I had something to say, and it turns out that I do
- I think storytelling isn’t just interesting, it’s important
- I started without a plan and in a short time have a good-sized group of readers – which means that there are a lot of people out there with shared interests who want to come together around these ideas.
- I don’t see anyone else out there linking up marketing, storytelling, influence, nonprofits, philanthropy, and social change…and I think these things are intimately related.
- I may inspire people I’ll never have a chance to meet
- I can share wonderful, undiscovered gems with others
- I’m a little compulsive
- I think the reality of how philanthropists think and make decisions needs to be better integrated into the dialogue about what philanthropy “should” be
- Marketing, storytelling, influencing, tribe-building, leading, creating, experimenting, sharing, testing, getting instant feedback…all good ways to spend my time.
- More people read my blog every day than read my college thesis – and that took a year to write
- Every so often, someone I don’t know emails me to say that something I wrote helped them
- Every so often, someone I do know tells me to keep it up
- Once you feel like (some) people are listening to you, it’s very hard to give that up
- Unexpected posts often strike a chord with people…and the ones I love can bore people to tears
- Learning what does and doesn’t work in spreading ideas online at a very low cost…THAT’S a skill that will only get more important over time
- Maybe, someday, if I keep at this for a few years, they’ll be a book in it
- And even if there isn’t, if I have a tribe of thousands of readers sharing what I’m writing with their friends, why exactly would I need to write a book?
- Traditional newspapers and magazines are dying a slow death. Even if blogs aren’t the end game, distributed, independently-created content is.
- Beats the heck out of a resume as a portfolio and a calling card (Malcolm Gladwell suggests that blogs are the new resume…Seth Godin says maybe you shouldn’t even have a resume.)
- Looking back, I can’t tell which posts I thought would be “good” or “bad”
- Won’t it be cool 5 years from now to look back on 1,000+ posts?
- Now that I know I can blog, I’m not afraid of Twitter (@sashadichter, by the way)
- If it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something, now’s the time to start logging those hours
- We need more hope in the world, and I’d like to be part of that hope
(HT to the SAMBAers’ Hamster Burial Kits & 998 Other Business Ideas for the long-list idea)
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
It’s nice to see you have decided to embrace twitter. It’s a great tool to spread your message.
@alpacamundo
I really enjoy reading your blog. Thank you for writing it.
Kathryn
Kathryn, thanks for your post. “Embrace” is a little strong, but I’m definitely “intrigued.” And I believe it is here to stay.
reasons to blog:
– it forces you to formulate your thoughts clearly and argue with yourself before you go online.
– it clears your head.
– used properly it is a great stress relief thing.
– it can be great fun to say; ‘I wrote about that a year ago’ (although nobody noticed at the time) and prove it….
But to be frank I started doing it because I used to be sending people mail:
”have you read this, don’t you think that…..”.
Now it is all there and available for people who think you say, or point to something useful sometimes and they can read it when it suits them (without having to react / reply).
Sasha,
Wow! 44 reasons. Nice post. I share most of them. I condensed my reasons to three.
1. Introduces me to kindred spirits (I’d otherwise never meet…and maybe one day might work and do life with.)
2. Makes me a stronger thinker and writer
3. Helps me add value to other people’s lives.
–El
Ps. I like # 17 Makes mom proud. If you are like me, you’ve always got to keep mom proud.
ps. 2. I left you a meaty lens today with extra toppings.
great list Sasha. When I try to quantify the personal/professional benefits of either blogging or yoga (two of my favorite things), I end up rambling on like an infomercial.
A few more reasons from my perspective:
– helps me empathize with journalists and their inbox full of spam, e-blasts and inappropriate pitches
– gives me a reason to learn how to use audio, video, and photo editing tools
– provides a firsthand example for understanding Web traffic and analytics
– makes me better at my day job (see all of the above)
I also thought it would keep me from having to make mixtapes for friends across the country, but alas, I still do that anyway.
WZ
Great article! Well stated!!