Blogs now tend to disappear, as everyone moves to Twitter or Instagram. People prefer to share their lives in a second than their thoughts in a week (or a month like me). But here’s why you should start a blog. You, and your friends!
1. Challenge yourself
Reading is easy. You read thousands of lines everyday. Even if you’re not the greatest book amateur, you read things on social media. Our brain need to gather information and that’s why we prefer compulsively scrolling on social media than to wait and focus on ourselves.
Creation
But writing is a whole different thing. To create is far more difficult than to consume.
Even if you read serious articles, you’re not really diving into the subjects. Writing will make you actually think and gather information -far more than if you just read an article. You’ll become skilled in structuring your thoughts and in research.
The Pace & Learning
While Hacker News and its Telegram channel spams you 10x a day with new technology news, writing an article cannot reasonably be done in an hour. For my most detailed articles, days of work are required and this is an amazing experience: I’ve learnt a lot of things doing this!
Audience
Don’t care about your audience : you mostly write for yourself. Bonus points if it is useful for the community. If you don’t write for money, do not expect your audience to grow exponentially. Only a few blogs on Earth gather +1k monthly views. Your audience will be more close to you, and thus care more about what you write.
2. Public or private
Posting online raises the issue of privacy.
The Privacy Paradox
Today people want privacy online. The European GDPR and recent laws in general tends to increase the protection of internet users.
However, at the same time they expose themselves on their Facebook timeline, on their Snapchat stories or Instagram photos.
We want to share, to strengthen our social bonds even when our worlds tends to separate us physically. Want to start a job in China? No problem, you can keep up with your friends everyday.
But here is the problem. Online messaging is enough. You don’t need Social Networks to share your lives.
When you post a story, you are screaming in the void. Hoping someone will eventually get it -and like it.
You’ll say it is the same for blogs: the audience is blurry, unclear.
Is a blog really different from social media?
The purpose of a blog really is different. Here I’m not talking about the old but popular Skyblog or Blogger that are the ancestors social networks: I’m talking about real personal blogs.
In a blog, you don’t share your lives, but your thoughts. That’s fundamentally different than sharing your last dress or meal: you expose your ideas, your creations. And it encourages you to think. There is no place left for superficial or casual stuff. If you read my blog, you doesn’t know me, but you might be interested in my articles (I hope so).
And that is interesting.