The other day in the Comments area for my How NOT to Write a Blog piece, reader Athanasios asked the following in the Comments area:

Too bad this is tongue in cheek, I’m guilty of at least half of them. On a serious note, I’ll be bold and expose my ignorance. So I started a blog as kind of a personal diary about things important to me. I get the feeling from some blogs that I’m just taking up space in the blogsphere and annoying the real elitist bloggers. So, should I just pull my blog and not publish it anywhere? Honestly, I don’t care so much about readership. It’s more for me, so is it protocol to keep it to myself and dissappear from BE [BlogExplosion]?

Here is the reply I posted to Athanasios and I am including all this in a new post in case you have a Comment of your own as to why you Blog:

    My feeling about Blogging is this: You blog to influence people in public. If that isn’t your goal — and it is by default if you write a blog — then you should instead turn your self-expression private and place your thoughts and feelings in an [offline] journal or diary.Many blogs are personal expressions of intimate thoughts and there is nothing wrong with that, I feel, as long as you are trying to be interesting to people who don’t know you.
    If you are only Blogging for yourself or for friends and family, why do it in public?
    You Blog in public because you want to be read by strangers and if you want to be read that means you must inspire your readers by providing them something they cannot find elsewhere.
    You start by answering the following question:
    What do you know no one else knows?
    You Blog to share that secret. 🙂

14 Comments

  1. Thank you so much for saying this! I do not understand why anyone would take the time and trouble of having a blog when they apparently do not write for a public.
    Also read your how not to have a blog post – Clever!

  2. Hi blestwithsons —
    I appreciate the passion of your post and I’m glad I’m not alone in my thinking here about the purpose of blogging. 🙂
    Your blog is a prime example of what we’re talking about here.
    You have a certain, powerful, point-of-view that you are sharing and your strength and perception are admirable!
    Thanks for the comments on my “How NOT to Blog” post. That one is still taking off in unexpected ways!

  8. I know it’s old, but this is an interesting post and at a time when I was re-thinking whether to blog further this has helped crystallise my thinking. Thanks

  12. I personally wouldn’t draw a sharp distinction between family/friends-only blog and public. It’s possible that you open a so-called ‘private’ blog to the public because you don’t mind them reading your blog, not necessarily because you are deeply desirous of them doing so.

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