Don’t Forget About Your Personal Blog!

By jamesmBlogging

In a time where we have Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Facebook, and all kinds of services to socialize with, it is far too easy to forget about the value of a personal blog. For some of us, a personal blog might be a place to express ourselves in our free time, but for others, it is an excellent opportunity to create quite a following. However, many of us have neglected our personal blogs, some of us don’t update our personal blogs, and a few of us don’t even have personal blogs! Regardless, there are a few great reasons as to why you should have one and keep it updated.

It’s All About You!

If your personal blog is popular, that means people are interested in you, and that should be quite the confidence booster. Some people use their blog as a way to share things that happen in their life. Others use personal blogs as a place of useful information and ideas (like me at OnlyJames), and, further more, others use their personal blog as a “life aggregator” that contains all your activity from around the web.

Personal Experience

One of the greatest benefits of a personal blog is that it allows your followers to connect with you on a fairly personal level. Your blog is like your home. You welcome them into your home, you share information about yourself, and you generate relationships with bloggers. When these people leave your blog, perhaps they will mention you around the blogosphere, and that is obviously a good thing—a very good thing.

Credibility and Understanding

A personal blog serves yet another purpose: it provides you with a level of credibility. You put your name out there, you let people get involved with you on a personal level, and you generate a community around yourself. There is much power and respect held when thousands of people are subscribed to your personal blog. It has all the makings of success written all over it if you can optimize this traffic.

Maintaining Attention

A personal blog can also act as a hub for all of a person’s projects and works. It might serve as a place for a blogger to raise awareness for a special project that only a few people know about. Think of this as a jump-start for future projects. Combine all this with a strong presence on Twitter, and there is some amazing potential ready to explode.

You, On The Internet

Entertain this idea for a few moments: put yourself in the shoes of a professional race car driver. Let’s say you represent team ABC and drive car #01. Fans always purchase team ABC’s merchandise and are glad to buy your lunch-boxes. But let’s assume that next season you are moving over to team XYZ. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that all those people were really fans of you instead of the car you drive and team you race for? Apply this very same concept to you and a blog you write for, and you now understand why marketing yourself is just as important.

Essentially, your personal blog is your own little chunk of the web that should be all about you. This is a place that you will, hopefully, keep for a long time, never sell, and show interest and appreciation to your followers. After all, every time a blogger writes an article, that blogger is, essentially, marketing himself or herself to the world.

If you have a personal blog, why not let us know where we can find out more about you?

16 thoughts on “Don’t Forget About Your Personal Blog!”

  1. The personal blog is great for you and bunch of your friends, but hardly outside of your inner circle. Aside from main blogs that I write for, I keep my own (http://cynicweb.com/). There’s hardly enough people visiting (let alone subscribing) for me to put anything interesting there. The way I see it – there’s so much information we all need to absorb in order to prosper, someone else’s personal details aren’t that important anymore. I noticed that sometimes I ask questions and comment people that I have no idea of age or gender – it’s that actual post or piece of information that got me act. In other words – I feel we interact with bits of information more then with real humans. Sad, isn’t it?

  2. I love the minimalistic blog design you have going on there. Thanks for commenting!

  9. Thanks for the important reminder. Some good points here. It is easy to forget about the personal blog in light of all the other social media activities we may get involved with. I have repeatedly found my personal blog to be an important component when looking for work though as many people find it interesting to get to know you a bit via your blog. I just overhauled and restarted mine recently.

    Robert Witham (http://www.robertwitham.com)

  10. Sometimes my personal blog helps me to cope with all my dirty stuff. It makes me then realise that there’s not much to be so ashamed about. Some other times I mainly use it as a toy box. And no, not so much porn in there.

    Thanks for letting us talk about our “babies”.

  12. I like how in your post you refer to a blog as a person’s home! Neat idea!

    Thanks for the invitation to share our personal blogs!

    crochetcraft.blogspot.com

  14. No problem Judy. I really do like your photography and how you integrate it into your blog. Be sure to keep it up!

  15. hey thanks for this opportunity to show off our own personal blogs. Excellent post by the way. The value of personal blogs are often overlooked among the more specifically focused posts.

    coffeejitters.blogspot.com

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