This is an excellent blogpost and a good reality check for those who blog. I love the Problogger blog and find it helpful even for us non-pro bloggers :). At the end of the post they ask,
Have you ever had a ‘defining moment’ in your blogging? What did you learn? What decisions did you make? How have you gone since changing your approach?
[From Authentic Blogging]
I have had many defining moments blogging but the first one that came to mind is a recent conclusion about blogging public policy. I realized I really didn’t like blogging about it anymore :). My opinions on such matters didn’t change. I haven’t stopped following or working toward accomplishing specific goals … offline. I still have a McCain “widget” in the sidebar of my blog but … you haven’t seen a whole lot of extensive public policy tracking lately on purpose.
I decided to only mention ongoing issues in brief, if at all, and not add much commentary. Not that I did a whole lot of that before. But, there was a season or … or three :), where I got overly focused on certain public policy issue.
That doesn’t mean I won’t ever talk about it. I find politics fascinating … it just means that on this blog it won’t be covered as much.
With regard to a few other issues that the above linked article talks about …
I don’t think, honestly, that I have ever thought I “knew more” than the readers of this blog. I am very direct sometimes and people have thought that to be a closed minded superiority thing. I can see how they might read that into the tone of the written words on my blog. But, being me :), I think it is just my sometimes bull headed communication style not based in any sense of superiority. I am still working on the bull headed thing. Even so, I have come to a place of realization that after 12 or so years of active online communication … it’s not an easy thing to change my bent toward insta-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding response.
I also like stats and find them informative and important mile markers. But I don’t try to manipulate traffic or derive a sense of purpose because of the amount of traffic that comes this way. I definitely do things to help my blog orbit the blogosphere well but I don’t worry about trying to create high traffic for the sake of being able to say I have high traffic.
In fact that’s easy to do and kind of a lazy way to go about blogging.
I do know that I tweak my blog too much. It is *much* better than even a year ago but … it can still be a problem. Just check out the post before this one :).
So, fellow bloggers and other online communicators, it’s your turn …
Have you ever had a ‘defining moment’ in your blogging? What did you learn? What decisions did you make? How have you gone since changing your approach?
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August 16, 2008 at 4:20 pm
[...] I mentioned in a previous post, I personally am not interested in blogging about those specific policy issues right ...