Troon Scotland
Should you blog for yourself or others?
Some advise to blog solely for your audience.
Others suggest to follow your passion.
Pinpointing your proper motivator makes the journey fun for you and beneficial for your readers.
Finding the right driver:
- makes blogging fun
- allows blogging to feel rewarding
- positions you to go pro
- energizes you
- stabilizes you for inevitable blogging ups and blogging downs
- yields the highest quality content for your readers
- fosters a sense of blogging community
- encourages you to engage followers frequently
Like cooking a fish, the best results occur if you find that “just right” mid-point between blogging for you and others.
Should you blog for yourself or others?
Keep these ideas in mind to find your blogging driver.
Yourself
Blog for yourself to enjoy the journey. Following your fun through blogging makes the work feel like the reward. Traffic, profits and business success feel like bonuses.
I blog for fun. But I learned how blogging for others too creates lasting blogging success.
Blogging strictly for yourself leads to problems like:
- failing to connect with your readers
- being out of touch
- losing the ability to solve reader problems
- difficulties with monetizing your blog; how can you give readers what they want and earn a profit if you do not listen to your readers?
The main problem with blogging 100% for yourself seems to be losing the critical connection necessary to cultivate:
- compassion
- empathy
- authenticity
Solo-focused bloggers blogging only for themselves soon publish a cyber diary. Readers stop following self-centered bloggers because self-obsessed bloggers blog about what’s on their mind versus what’s on their reader’s minds. Until you become a world-renowned celebrity few humans care about what’s on your mind. People want you to know what’s on their mind so you can solve their problems with your content.
People want you to know what's on their mind so you can solve their problems with your content.Click To Tweet
But be careful about swinging fully over to blogging only for others. Living for others through blogging is impossible if you have fear in your mind. Fear in mind is ego. Ego sees separation. Seeing separation creates even a smidge – not more – of self-interest. Honor self-interest just a wee bit until you become enlightened. Honor the mini desire to possess stuff for yourself like:
- money
- a home
- increased business
- blog traffic
Attempting to deny these ego wants creates:
- resistance
- writer’s block
- exhaustion
- energy-sapping inauthenticity
because lying to yourself creates the illusion that you are 100% altruistic. No, you are not. Not only is this OK, it is a requirement to actually enjoy blogging and to sustain until you become a professional blogger.
Others
Blogging for others seems important because success flows through other human beings.
Other people:
- read your blog
- comment on your blog
- promote your posts
- buy your eBooks
- hire you
- form joint partnerships with you
- coach you
- ask for your help
Without others, the only person doing each thing on the bullet point list would be you.
Bloggers need to listen closely to reader needs to solve their problems with free and premium content.
Blogging for others feels good. Everyone loves helping people.
As noted prior; don’t deny self-interest motivators because walking this path creates resistance via a somewhat phony persona. Unless you can walk about from everyone and everything in your life right now a tiny part of your mind wants something for you from your blog.
Blogging mainly for others and a little bit for yourself is A-OK.
Both Yourself and Others
Blog for yourself. Follow your passion. Doing what *you* love energizes you for the long pro blogging journey.
Blog for others. Earn a profit by helping people how people wish to be helped. Listen to their needs. Solve their problems with your blog content.
Blogging for yourself and others seems to be the right answer because:
- no unenlightened being is 100% altruistic (despite what ego suggests)
- no blogger goes pro unless they solve other people’s problems
Aim for your midway point between selfish interest and altruistic motives.
At the most challenging blogging crossroads, you need to deeply love blogging for yourself to nudge through rough patches.
All bloggers sometimes express concerns about their:
- blog traffic
- blogging profits
- online business
This proves self-interest exists.
Good!
Being comfortable with blogging for your fun or pleasure removes guilt, self-righteousness and other ego trap games causing untold blogging struggles.
From this passionate self-interest, begin edging into humanity with branches of compassion. Listen closely to the needs of your readers. Ask how you can help your blogging community. Observe pressing issues. Blogging for others forms a connection that builds a rock-solid foundation for your blogging campaign.
Large, rabidly loyal blogging communities flock to bloggers who solve their problems. Bloggers listen closely to their tribe to solve problems tossed their way via these large, supportive tribes.
Helping people feels fun because blogging for others instills a sense of love coursing through your being. Everyone enjoys the feeling of serving people. Bask in the glow of this added bonus of serving human beings through your blog.
Important Note
I appeared to have a terrible time blogging for others – for a while – because I lacked a deep sense of compassion for human beings. Fear in my mind closed me off from people. Per every human being, I suffered intensely at various points of my life. But the length and intensity of my particular suffering created an ego-contrived wall resistant to feeling my fears.
I pushed my feelings down, my disconnection persisted and I alienated myself from my readers for a bit.
Struggles followed because I did feel the fear in my mind fueling my lack of compassion.
I add this note for bloggers who consistently:
- feel annoyed about spam
- feel enraged about readers not buying their stuff or hiring them
- take readers for granted
- make bloggers enemies
- struggle horribly to drive traffic and earn profits
A hefty number of bloggers behave in such fashion for suffering from a lack of compassion. Being compassionate largely dissolves these low energy feelings because feeling other people’s fear and pain dissolves your annoyance, agitation and anger into love, acceptance and compassion. From this energy you organically blog for others seamlessly.
Every blogging struggle is fear in your mind. Struggles appear to be outside of you but the worldly problem simply reflects fear in your mind back to you. Resisting fear makes you less compassionate. Being less compassionate cuts you off from the very readers who help you succeed.
Some blogging communities appear to be dominated by fear manifest as frequent complaining, angry judgements and a general visceral distaste of things related to blogging. Face your fears or else you will go down with these sinking blogging ships, rudderless without the predominant guide of compassion and service to right their course.
Face, feel and release fears in your mind. A new reality slowly reveals itself. Compassion begins to overtake your being. Feeling predominantly compassionate allows you to blog more for others, a necessary shift to going pro. Blogging for others while following your personal passion makes this journey fun, freeing, rewarding and fulfilling.
Conclusion
Listen closely to your reader’s needs. Blog because you possess a personal passion for blogging.
Find a comfortable midpoint for yourself between self-service and service to lay a granite-like foundation for your blogging campaign.
