Ten reasons to start your personal blog today

Hey there !

We have been talking continuously about How to Create Content for your Blog, How to Choose Your Blog's Target Audience, How to Increase your Blog's Traffic, but today, let's have a look at the top ten reasons why you should start blogging, in case you haven't already.

We will talk of blogging benefits for individuals today - or personal blogging. We will have a look at the benefits of enterprise blogging in a separate post.

1. Building your own personal brand

Having a personal blog is equivalent to projecting your voice out there in the industry / market that you operate in. Whether you are a tech influencer or a travel blogger, no enterprise is complete without a blog. Even if you have presence everywhere else, a blog should be part of your marketing itinerary. It helps you direct users to a place where they can access your long form content, and consume content at their leisure. Typically, social media content is competing for attention and space spans, but a blog allows you to be slightly more expansive. You can liken this to a more leisurely stroll around the city whereas social media is more like zipping through the city expressway at a lightening speed. Moreso, a blog post can have a longer shelf life, than social media posts.

2. Educating readers

Have you found a better / easier way of solving a complicated problem? Have you always struggled with something and come up with a quick solution? If you want to share your experiences with the world, then a blog is your best bet. Of course, social is quite the thing and so is YouTube, but don't you want your readers to have an in-depth understanding of what your story is, how you embarked on your journey, and so on. Of course, our brains are visual and we interpret video content better, but a blog can really provide a strong residual glue to tie all your content marketing efforts together. All your social media channels, your website, can tie back to your blog, thereby making it the fulcrum of long form, perpetual content.

3. Creating awareness

Have you launched a new resource? New website? New channel? How will you spread awareness about your new initiative. Again a blog can be used for building awareness over a sustained period of time - of course, other channels allow you to do that as well. But a blog allows to post an interesting mix of content. Let me illustrate.

Say you are a gadgets geek with his own blog, about to launch your own line of products. Here's how you can build awareness using your blog:

Week 1: Coming Soon post; with corresponding posts on social + a video. But your blog has a much more detailed content piece [Answering the why, what , where and so on. Make the readers a part of your journey.

Week 2: Behind-the-scenes post and videos on your blog

Week 3: 2 weeks / 1 week to go posts: Coinciding with your launch date, you can choose to launch such posts at the same time building momentum on other channels

Week 4: Go live - you can do guest interviews, early user testimonials and so on

Week 5: Sharing post launch updates.

4. Enabling two-way communication

Okay - now all social media allows you to have two way communication - so what's so special about comments on a blog and why should you care? Think of how you consume social media - you might come across some content by accident, some by intention and some courtesy your social footprint. But someone who visits your blog, has more chance of coming back to it for actually learning something new, self-education, awareness, entertainment. The key is choice and intention.Wont' you want to interact with an audience that is more engaged with your content? Of course you would.

5. Establish influence

Nurturing a blog takes time. I know  - I have been writing one since 2005 - it can tough, frustrating and mind-numbing at times. That's why those who can blog and command an audience have much more serious credentials. Creating short-form content is not that difficult as compared to consistently creating 1000 - 2000 words articles twice a week. It takes research, editing and lots of fact checking to write an article on your blog. Hence a blog can establish your authority with a lot more conviction that just social media engagement.

6. Enables learning

I learnt most of the new tech in marketing from my blog. How? I typically began wanting to know more about a topic, conducting a lot of research, and then writing about what I learnt. In this process, I was helping others, but also myself. I have found that writing about the things that I learnt was a surefire way of ensuring that I understood it well. Because I was always careful that I should present it in the most simplest, lucid way possible. And that helped me. To understand what I knew - and what I didn't.

7. Builds your network

A blog helps you to build your network like no other. If you are educating others, enabling learning, and establishing influence along the way, there are strong chances of you interacting with other like minded-peers, building your network.

8. Provides an identity

This has been so true for me. When I started out, I blogged about all things marketing - then I kept on refining the scope of my blog and the audience [Read about How to choose your blog's target audience here. This continuous refinement of the blog's target audience and scope helped me shape my voice and identity as a marketer. A blog can be your calling card to greater things.

9. Gateway to other things [books]

Yes - the web is filled with countless people who have launched successful careers as an author / speaker / influencer courtesy their blogging efforts. Your blog is your voice in the virtual and real world. Why would you want to let go of this wonderful opportunity?

10. Financial Success

I saved this point for the last - because I believe that financial success is a by-product of good blogging. It shouldn't be the only driver to launch a blog. A blog can pave the path for a sustainable, profitable venture [think affiliate marketing, collaborations with brands and paid promotions]. However, we need to remember the reasons why we launched the blog in the first place. If the financial reasons over-ride our passion for blogging, then it can mean we are not offering the best possible experience for our users [this could be in cases of undisclosed, unethical promotions, undeclared sponsorships of posts, content riddled with conflict of interest.

Putting it all together
Hope this gives enough motivation for you to start blogging today. You can also check out some other related posts on blogging, How to Create Content for your Blog, How to Choose Your Blog's Target Audience.

Let me know what you think in the comments section below!