To Build Credibility

This applies whether you’re blogging for business or as a hobbyist or enthusiast about a particular topic. Blogs are a great way for you to share your opinions about issues that are relevant to your business or field. By posting regularly about hot topics you are showing to your readers (and potential customers if you are a business blogger) that you are savvy, modern and know a lot about your field.

To Keep On Top Of What’s Going On

Dedicating yourself to writing regular blog posts forces you to get out there and research the latest topics and issues related to your blog. Life gets in the way sometimes and we often find ourselves “too busy” to sit down and do some focused research on things that are relevant to our business or even our interests. If you’re an aspiring photographer, for example, you should be reading photography magazines, researching who’s who in the world of photography and keeping up to date with the latest camera technologies. Blogging encourages you to really seek out the important issues and then reflect on them and share them with the whole world – what a great reason to start a blog!

To Release Some Creativity

As a creative individual, writing is one channel I’ve not used as a creative release since I was about 9 years old and thought it was fun to pretend I was a novelist and sit down on the family MS-DOS PC and type up ridiculous stories about teenagers falling in love with vampires (Yes, I swear I had the idea before Stephenie Meyer but we won’t go there!). One of the best things about blogging is that it’s all about your opinions – it’s not being marked by a lecturer for scholarly credibility, it’s a way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world in your own way.

To Generate $$

This might be a bit more of a far-fetched reason to start a blog, but with some dedication and hard work, it certainly can be done. Consider Michael Arrington, an American entreprenuer and lawyer who started a blog called Techcrunch in 2005 to write about new technologies, which became so hugely popular that he eventually sold the site to AOL (a major US mass media corporation) for $25million. This is obviously a story of extreme success, but imagine if you could just achieve a fraction of such success through your blog? If your site becomes popular enough you can eventually be endorsed by advertisers who share the same target market, so it’s a good idea to keep focused on who your target audience is when you’re writing your posts.

Blog… what a stupid word! I’m tired of using it so I probably won’t ‘blog’ about ‘blogging’ ever again, but nevertheless after writing this post I feel like I have so much more reason and inspiration to continue blogging! So here’s hoping that this space will make me more credible, keep me at the cutting edge of my field, give me a literary creative release, possibly one day generate some extra cash, and in the process, give you something half interesting to read!

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