This is a question more people need to ask. Be it a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, or whatever else, they all need to be rooted in having something worth to sharing to some small piece of the world.
Many people get caught up in thinking the blog, YouTube, or podcast is the thing, when it’s just the thing that lets you share the real thing. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to really integrate this lesson.
That sounds like a chicken/egg scenario: how are you supposed to know if you have something worth sharing without producing that something first to make that assessment?
I think putting more questions and uncertainty in the way of actually just writing/podcasting/youtubing is what stops a lot of people really building the habit in the first place.
That’s just it, a lot of people want to write, podcast, or be a YouTuber, but they struggle with ideas. They want to use the medium, but they don’t have content ideas. The “real thing” I was talking about is the overarching theme or topic. What are you into, what are you going to write, podcast, or make videos about?
I think understanding what you want to share helps solve the major stumbling block that leads to thousands of blogs with one entry that is effectively hello-world. If told to draw anything, most people will sit with a blank page. However, if they are told to draw a castle, those bounds give them the freedom to start and create, and it can evolve from there.
What are you into to? What hobbies do you have? What do you know, or have opinions about, that others might be interested in? This is your theme, the “real thing”. Writing, podcasting, or video production, without this usually falls flat after 1 or 2 attempts, and it makes it impossible for a habit to form.
If you’re already into something and doing it on a regular basis, then you’re just writing about, talking about it, or recording what you’re already doing or thinking about all the time anyway. The content and ideas can flow more easily, especially at the beginning. Not to mention, being more motivated to make the content, since it’s already a passion.
So many people are trying to make content about nothing, because they aren’t really doing anything else… and this is where friction is born. Do something you find interesting, then share that thing and your perspective on it. Start with the doing, not the sharing (writing, podcasting, and YouTubing is the sharing).
Hopefully this clarifies what I was getting at and resolves the chicken/egg thoughts.
You're supposed to be capable of introspection and ask yourself "would I truly be interested in what I want to write? Do I even have an idea of what I want to write?" before writing anything...
there are two types of blogs - sincere ones, where the author pours out his soul and talks about what he can't keep to himself, possibly raising some important issues, trying to convey them to the masses, and SEO blogs - where there are excrements of hashtags, advertising slogans, constant repetitions, and requests to throw a bone (support the project, you haven't supported the project yet? you can do it here, well, or here! did I forget to tell you that you can support the project? by the way, one more thing - support the project!). Such ones are immediately banned. I am also very annoyed by those who are already looking for a place for a banner from the first minutes of the site's existence. you will not survive in this world without this cent? 10 bucks a month - payment for personal shame?
all this conversion and optimization of texts for search engines turns bloggers into robots, and it is simply impossible to read the texts, they are not human, they are as if created by neural networks. who needs this hypocrisy?
i think you're exactly right. but to blog with zero SEO in mind sounds foolish as well.
you should blog, and by a blog definition that is going on the internet. to get more people to read it (often the goal) the easiest thing to do is utilize the tool people use to find things on the internet (search engines).
if there are issues with spam, keyword stuffing, forever run-on paragraphs of nothingness, well that is the search engine algorithm's job to fix. And they have a lot of money to fix it.
and if they don't fix it we should use a new search engine. it'll take time. but those seem like the dynamics at play in this scenario.
“Do you want to be a Writer, or do you want to write?” I think that almost any question of the form “Do you want to be an Xer, or do you want to X” is useful these days.
100%. As a kid growing up near a golf course I knew lots of kids who wanted to be a pro golfer (me too). Did they want to spend 10 hrs a day at the range hitting ball after ball? Not so much. Lots of people want to be Warren Buffett - do they want to read 10-ks for 10 hrs a day? Not so much.
what the gp is getting at is that back in the day there were people who wanted to be in a band not out of any particular musical talent or even inclination but because a lot of their friends were doing it and it looked like a cool thing to do.
Your question got me thinking about supermarket bulletin boards. I recall them from way back as busy places with lots of notes attached, but last year or thereabouts I remember seeing a small bulletin board with one note attached and thinking how unusual it was.
