For Whom Do You Blog?
This question floated in my mind for sometime now along with the question as to why do I blog. Am I just blogging for myself or for someone? Are the bloggers in my circle blogging for their selves, for search engines or for the readers like me? Or are we just rambling words, typing and conversing with ourselves and the PCs?
Maybe you who happen to read this may have a ready answer in mind. Or maybe you don’t, and is facing a dilemma as to what you should write because a particular group wants this, and another wants that, and you want to blog about your love life. Maybe your blogging idol wrote something that seems like telling you not to blog about your personal life because it is uninteresting. Or it could also be that someone barges in to your site and tells you not to blog about SEO and money making because you are not an expert on it or that you have no real blogging earnings to boast of.
For the hundreds of blogs that I read since my blogging career (so, it’s now a career), these are plenty of those who openly declare: “I blog for myself”
Blogging For Self
Do you? You flaunt your best writing skills and literary acrobatics for yourself. You rant even if the anger had died down. You relive it until you publish it in your blog. Your monologues, your venting space, you call your blog.
You declare you don’t care much about traffic, but silently keep track of the stats. You consider a reader fortunate to have found his way in to your site. You are happy when someone visits your sites but wary of some link baits or blog promotion. You rarely advertise and join communities. But when you do, you will not care much about what they think because you are blogging for your self.
Before we proceed further, or raise an arm of protest, I too, fall into this category. I admit, and yeah, it’s part of the blogging experience. Some people might say that you are just wasting your time blogging and/or scribbling your diary. Don’t be sad. As long as you keep yourself interesting, why not? I read blogs of people who write for theirselves.
Blogging For The Readers
Most of your posts are driven by what your reader wants. “What should I write in a blog?” asks a reader. So you write a series of blogging tutorials. The monologues become conversations as you interact and exchange comments with the readers.
Some of my posts are for the readers. Yep. I got some friends who are curious what blogging is all about and how people make money from it. So I wrote posts for them.
Blogging For Search Engines
Search Engine Optimizations that is. You might wonder about those bold letters and obviously redundant highlighted phrases, or those links to you-don’t-care-where pages within and outside the blog. The ultimate goal is to rank high in the search engine results page (SERP) and for searchers (or prospective readers) to easily find the posts, although the intention is to drive more traffic, and more monetization opportunities.
By whose law should you say it’s wrong? Perhaps, if you overdo it and/or mislead someone, there is always Google and its terms and conditions.
Blogging For The Target Market
Niche blogging, niche marketing. Your blog is targeted for a small segment of readers, or potential readers. If you target dog lovers, then you blog about dogs and everything associated with dogs. It is not necessary that you should be a dog lover too. But if you love dogs and has quite an extensive experience handling dogs, then it would be to your advantage.
The most common niche today is “make money online”. There are plenty of blogs under this category. Though it is hard to differentiate the real from the pretender, any one of them might hit it big someday. Let them continue blogging and let’s learn from them.
Blogging for All
As you take a look at your sites (or your plans to blog), for whom do you really blog? I can no longer say that I blog for myself alone because I, too, value my readers and online friends. Every visit, every comment, every dropping of the entrecard, is very much appreciated. I also post entries in the hope of luring search engine users, and expanding my reader base. I write for myself, and for anyone who finds my entries useful.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Ceblogger is a CPA trapped in his cubicle while his mind wanders outside watching the world, and exploring possibilities his mind conceived.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:10 am
“I write for myself, and for anyone who finds my entries useful.” - You took the words right out of my mouth with this line for that’s the reason I blog. Aside from self-expression, in my own small way, I use my blog to inform people about things I have an interest in.
Great post.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:49 am
thats great!
July 8th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I blog what’s on my mind
July 8th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
for the sake of mankind xD
lol
just droppin
July 8th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Great post. I started blogging years ago for myself, and still do. Although I do have ads and some revenue-generating gimmicks on my blog, it still continues to be a personal one where I share my thoughts. I don’t blog for SEO or what others want. I post what I want, but if it brings people in. then that’s good enough for me
July 8th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
for me, just want to share some info. which may find useful to others….
July 9th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Pan,
iceman9, thanks!
Lhurey, yeah! and nice one on the “lagahit for president” video. Twas the first of video i saw. I couldn’t help myself from laughing out loud.
tiborsho, wow! you’ve gpt a very idealistic goal! lol. thanks for dropping by, bro!
July 9th, 2008 at 2:41 am
kat, thanks! i think most bloggers started almost on similar grounds, but some evolved along with their increased knowledge brought by these social networks, SEO enthusiasts, paid sites and probloggers.
freezebox, right on bro!
July 9th, 2008 at 5:20 am
@ceblogger
hahaha…thanks bro.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:08 am
I started my blog a couple of years ago and created it specifically for traffic purposes for the company I work for, but as the time has progressed so has my blog and in fact my writing style. These days…I blog for me! When I have some exciting news to share…I write a blog post…when I need to vent…I write a blog post. Its now become my way of expressing myself and readers will either love it or hate it…either way I dont care and that may appear selfish *shrug* but ya get that!
July 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Good post, its best to blog for readers.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
that i dont know.. hehehe
July 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I blog for myself, at least that what I think I do. However, there are times that I tend to blog for my readers too and still other time when I blog for search engines. He he.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:30 am
I blog for myself, for people who would want to read my blog, for people who wouldn’t want to read my blog, for people who would criticize my blog and for people who would like to hate my blog. *wink*
LiNTEK
July 11th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
nice post uve got. i think many blog for themselves - those who dont have any ads, links, etc. seen a fair bit of those.
but the bloggers who blog for an audience, their blogs tend to be more interesting… though there is still an audience & target market that will like/ dont like them
just some 2 cents opinion
July 12th, 2008 at 12:04 am
i did blog for myself before, but got bored.. then I realized to blog thoughts more about tech topics which are related to my work..
you’ve got a nice post! you’re enlightening blogger wannabies..
July 12th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Yo, Von. I do mess with my blog everytime - bec of those experiments. But as much as possible, I always try to stick to my blog subject. Well, the reason why I blog is I wanted to learn and know first-hand if one can really earn from blogging. I found it its true, but not as huge as what others claim, in fact, its really hard to earn big bucks by just blogging. So comes affiliate marketing and online business stuff - these are where the money flow.
As usual, great post kuya.
July 13th, 2008 at 8:20 am
for my self sir hehehehe, para naay ma post na walai sense na kadramahan in life
musta sir?
July 13th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
This is a very good question. I had to stop and think after reading your post. My foray into the public blogging world (I was blogging privately for a year) was mainly fueled by the “want” to earn money online. But as months passed, I learned to enjoy blogging not necessarily to earn anymore. The want is still there but it’s no longer as strong as the initial yearning was. Like you, I guess I write for myself mainly now and for anyone who can relate to my posts.