Why I Started a Blog

Bit meta to be writing a blog post about writing a blog, but here we are.

Recently, I have been thinking about why I started blogging, and reflecting on my motivations and intentions for deciding to write semi-monthly blog posts. Hopefully this also convinces you to start a blog too.

When people talk about blogging, one of the first topics to come up is always motivation. "What is my motivation to start blogging?", "What are my blogging values?". These are the first questions you might ask yourself when you think about starting a blog, and can also be the first hurdle in trying to convince yourself to get started.

I wanted to start this blog for fun. It's nice to have a little hobby aside from work, and I like having something to work on, my little passion project. I also wanted to have my own 'space' on the internet to share my thoughts on topics and connect with other like-minded people.

What better way than to get yourself out there with your own content that really shows what you are all about!

Try writing down 3 reasons, motivations or intentions you have for starting a blog. What do you want to do? What matters to you? Use these statements as your north star, your blogging manifesto, and keep them somewhere that you can always refer back to them in times of need.

Another question that stopped me from starting this blog was "what if I don't know what to write about / run out of ideas?"

To start to overcome this, I came up with a list of things I wanted to talk about and put into my own words. It wasn't detailed, or technical, or deeply inspirational, and I wasn't an expert in any of the topics. You and your ideas don't have to be any of those things. All you have to be is yourself!

If you're sure you want to write a blog, but your idea tank is all dried up, sources like https://answerthepublic.com are great places to start. You can search for ideas and find topics people are searching for to find knowledge gaps or popular content ideas people are looking for.

Imposter syndrome can crop up a lot when you start blogging (it certainly did for me), the feeling of "who am I to write about this? I'm no expert, I only just started out..." etc. The best advice I can give for overcoming these feelings is 1) Rephrase the question - "Why not me? Who says I can't write about this tech if I want to?" and 2) Stop holding yourself back! Everybody has a different and unique perspective on pretty much every topic that ever existed, so why not start sharing your own thoughts and contributing to the discussion.

"What if nobody reads it?"

Along with the feelings brought on by imposter syndrome, I found a lot of my struggle with committing to starting a blog was all around comparing myself to others and feeling my content wouldn't be good enough and nobody would want to read it.

Although it is hard, try not to focus on the numbers. I stopped checking my analytics as frequently and I started to feel so much more confident. If I don't obsessively check how well my posts are doing, or how many views / reads I'm getting, I can instead focus on improving my writing and thinking of new post ideas.

Be confident about your work and what you're doing, shout out about it and share it with your friends, family and social media followers. Not only will this help the numbers (although we aren't counting anymore), I find it also boosts my motivation when people read and enjoy my work. How can people appreciate your hard work if you keep it a secret?

Starting a blog for me was about sharing my own take on things to anyone who wanted to read it. What does staring a blog mean to you? and if you haven't started yet... what's holding you back?