I feel like in my time of confliction, with my thoughts all over the place, that blogging should be my release. My “safe place” to dump those thoughts and let the words just fall onto the screen. But in this day and age of blogging, it seems like that “personal blogging” so many of us began with has fallen to the side. We now focus on generating content that will push traffic to our sites so we can increase of revenue from ad networks, so we can engage with larger audiences in hopes of landing higher-paying opportunities and invitations to events. We spend hours curating for Pinterest, building perfectly niched boards so that we can cross-promote our content to thousands of individuals for their click-throughs.
We’re so focused on being better, being bigger, reaching more that I think we’ve lost sight of our true beginnings.
What happened to blogging for the sake of just wanting to get something off our chest? What happened to wanting to be real with people and telling them how we think we’re failing at parenting, or that we hate our jobs, or that life is scary and we don’t know what to do anymore?
Why have so many bloggers forgotten their roots and turned their blogs into content machines with just an end goal of more money, more invitations, more things to do because of their blog?
I admit – I’m guilty of this too.
I often find myself staring at my drafts and all the unpublished or half-completed posts I have and wondering what will drive the most traffic. I find myself updating my profiles across all of the influencer agencies, tweaking my suggested rates and adding new content examples like my life depends on it. To be honest, some days it feels like my life DOES depend on it. The income is nice – it helps to pay off debts, to have fun, to not feel so strapped. Some days, blogging has been my escape, but it hasn’t been the writing. It’s been the hours spent on Facebook scheduling posts, or pinning to boards all the pretty and fun projects I’ll never get around to but I know my followers there just might.
But right now, I need blogging to be like it was years ago. When you could just write and write and it didn’t matter if people read it (okay, it did matter, it felt good to know someone read your hundreds of words and connected with it).
I’m asking you, those of you with your own blog, to bring back the personal. How else can we connect with our audiences when we don’t let them into our inner workings? How can we say we offer them resources for healthy living or modern parenting if we don’t show them our own struggles with such?
I challenge you to write a personal blog post.
Not sponsored, not promoting something or evergreen to drive long-term traffic. Once you publish, leave the link the comments here and I will visit each and every one to read and connect with you on whatever you choose to write about. It’s where blogging started and we need to remember our roots and what makes us keep hustling.
So let’s do it. Let’s ignore our editorial calendars, let’s pause our hours of social content curating and scheduling and take the time to create a personal, “this is me” post for our audiences. Are you with me?
