The Appeal and the Art of Blogging.

Why to blog. Where to blog. How to get started.

The first time that I heard the term “Blog” was in 2004. When I learned that it stands for “Web Log” (in the sense of a diary on the Web), it did not make any sense to me: Why should I write a diary, usually a collection of very personal texts, on the Web, sharing it with everyone?

Those days, blogging was quite a new phenomenon and mainly seen as a “technically easy” way to publish personal content on the Web, on a regular basis. Early blogs mostly comprised plain (short) texts only. Nowadays one can find blogs providing sophisticated content in a compelling way. It’s the art of writing extended by the means of a digital canvas.

But why should I blog? And is it worth the efforts?

To my mind there are various motives supporting the idea of blogging. And there are various reasons to do so. To answer the second question, whether it is worth the efforts, you should be clear about your reason(s) and motives.

If you feel that you have to tell something to the world, then blogging is for you. You can share your message with a huge (potential) audience on the web, without convincing anybody, e.g. an editor, beforehand to release your work. You can share your message and get the response. The motivation then is quite intrinsic and to some extent even altruistic — hence once your text is shared and gets attention, you accomplished your goal. It pays off from there.

Another reason to blog is to sell something over the web. The umbrella word for that then would be content marketing. You provide knowledge to your readers for free. The goal is to educate / inform / entertain them in a way that sheds a good light on your product or services. This is not an easy one and blogging is then often only part of a quite compelling marketing mix. Whether it pays off or not then depends on to what extent your revenue raises over time, compared to a non-blogging scenario.

And maybe you want to make blogging your full-time job. This allows you to work from anywhere, anytime, hence provides a lot of freedom. If you are intrinsically motivated (hence, no one needs to kick your a.. to sit down and write), this can be an interesting option. However, success very often does not happen over night and you probably need to collect a lot of experiences (and produce a lot of content) before you may eventually succeed. Whether it pays off or not at the end of the day — you will see. To my opinion, if you are not intrinsically motivated and do not feel as a blogger, you won’t endure the time until you earn your first bucks with your blog. That’s however my personal opinion and you maybe among the lucky ones that jump-start their blogging careers and earn money from scratch.

To my mind those three reasons are the three main pillars, why you might want to blog. I however do not claim the list to be complete, there may exist several nuances in between.

Where to blog?

There are a lot of websites and blogspots out there to discuss that question. I try to be short here, share my impressions in a compact form with you, so that you can timely start-off, if you wish to do so.

Inspired by Neil Patel’s blog, I played around with Tumblr, Medium, Blogger, Squarespace and WordPress. To my mind, that’s a good starting set from which you can pick an option (or more).

If you are new to blogging, you might find it appealing to first focus on producing content and then add more sophisticated features later on — and deal with data regulation and other formal obligations.

I had a good start on Tumblr. It was a convenient, easy to use canvas where I could put my ideas into life. I still blog there using a pseudonym and I can highly recommend it to you as a starting platform. Nevertheless, in the first place you will be visible to tumblr’s community; means of SEO so that you attract a global audience from all over the World Wide Web appeared to be limited to me. So if you blog to earn money, you might consider moving to another platform.

Medium is a very convenient platform, too and it provides you with means to earn money that can be set-up quite comfortably. Nevertheless, you need not join the partner program -the prerequsite for being eligible to earn money on Medium- from the very beginning. The blogspot as such is very convenient and you can access a free picture database to add photos to your blogs. Especially in the beginning that is a great help. Once you are all set to join the partner program, you can do so. In any case it makes sense to become a member as you can find a large number of interesting articles that support you in your endeavour. Having that said, sharing your content outside the Medium community is mainly done via sharing friend links and social media links. So, again, if you want to gain access to a global audience anywhere on the Web, you might face some limitations.

Google’s blogger.com is also a great place to start. Easily to set-up, it won’t take you too long to get started. You are also out there on the Web and the platform provides you with means to earn money via Adwords. There is however no community like on Tumblr or on Medium. So it is up to you to generate traffic to your blog by providing high quality content and by means of SEO. But if you want to share your knowledge with the World Wide Web and do not rely on a community, blogger.com is a great place to start. And as I wrote, it is easy to use and you can start very quickly with writing there.

Squarespace is another great platform, both for blogging and for Webdesign. I like that it is a mixture of sophisticated features while relatively easy to use. So you might need a little longer to start-off compared to the other platforms, but you have more means — including making money on the World Wide Web. Some authors say that Squarespace is the market leader in that area.

Finally and last but definitely not least there is WordPress. WordPress ist rich in features and offers a lot of plugins that you can use to build your Webproject. To my mind, there are no limitations to what projects you can realize, especially when you use the option to host the WordPress platform on your distinct Webspace (there are providers out there offering that, wrapped with professional services, such as bluehost.com). The trade off that you face is the platform’s complexity. Depending on what you have in mind, you may need relatively long there to get started. But once started, there are no boundaries.

A suitable strategy for me was to start on the more easy to use platforms, gain first experiences with blogging. Then you can explore the further platforms and make an informed decision, whether you want to move there. Or whether you start a new project while keeping your current one(s). For the moment, I am writing more than one blog, because I like to share ideas in various fields. So to say, I need to first sow my wild oats, before I focus on specific topics. Maybe you like that approach, too.

How to get started?

As mentioned above, people look out for Blogs that provides them with knowledge, not mere information. They want to learn how to tackle a specific issue, how to solve a distinct problem and so on.

So you need to develop a focus. I myself, I am currently sowing my wild oats, as I told you above. That means that I thought of some topics I am interested in, spread them over the above platforms and let my ideas flow. I simply love to write. After that warm-up, I will pick a topic, or maybe two, at one time that I drive. You need to publish at least one article per week, better two, to become known over time. And this will take several months, if not one or even two years, so you better choose a field of interest that does not get boring, even when you deal regularly with it for quite a while.

Once you found a field of interest, to which you want to add value and “edutain (educate + entertain)” your readers, I suggest that you come-up with an editorial plan, for you personally. You can think of typical problems that your readers face and devote one or more articles to each of them. That way you might find it easy to come-up with 50 or even more topics, which then would prepare you for six months, up to one year, depending on your publishing frequency. I encourage you to create that list online, without publishing it. Nevertheless, when you work on one story, you face already the following topics. And if ideas come to your mind related to one of the future topics, you can take some notes, already online so that you do not miss them when you eventually write about that topic. Sometimes it also helps me, to write about another topic and then return to the current one to overcome a writer’s blog.

First and foremost it is important to keep writing and produce content that you then can adopt and use in different contexts and in different formats (for instance slides for an Online Training that you then can derive quite easily).

For now, I wish you a great start with your new, or even your next blogging project. Please feel free to share your experiences with me in the comments section below.