I was having a conversation recently about how and why I chose blogging as an experiment that I was going to invest my time and energy into - and it quickly became a sound-boarding session for things I had and hadn’t considered (something I love about growth mindset individuals).
The Pursuit
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to pursue interacting with more people in greater capacities and both communicating the ways of which I think about things at a specific point in time and also sharing my thoughts with others. I had been thinking about this for a while, but I hadn’t really considered the idea of blogging as a way to do this.
I looked at various platforms and knew a big part of writing content and engaging with others was going to be for the purpose of establishing myself and building what I have heard referred to as a Personal Brand. As I mentioned in my blog article about Markdown Blogging - I wanted the interface to be inspiring and help me with the main problem I knew I was going to face: Consistency.
The Why
Probably the most important part of this conversation and endeavor was Why is this worth doing?.
This should likely be the question we all ask ourselves when we look at implementing some new process or undertaking.
There are many benefits to building a personal brand that I wanted to explore. I am comfortable being told I’m wrong about something - so maybe if I publicly document my current thoughts and understanding that I will have people engage and tell me why I am wrong or how to think about something from a different perspective.
I also wanted to have conversations with people who work on different problems and have different perspectives on the same problem. Finding ways to collaborate on common problems or finding ways to integrate and standardize on what the data or process should look like throughout a given lifecycle.
Another interesting point someone brought up and that I’ve used since was that blogs and portfolios are an agent of continuous advertising on your behalf. While you are sleeping and/or otherwise pre-occupied, a blog can serve as a medium for continuing to push your thoughts or ideas when you otherwise cannot. You know have this “thing” that actively works to establish you as existing with an idea that people might resonate with.
Lastly - I wanted to have fun. I work on a variety of technical and non-technical projects that require learning new skills and I LOVE projects. I wanted to add some personal flare and include things that are not serious or technical but highlight some fun building I do.
The How
Again, I tried social media platforms and writing various articles in various places and it didn’t fit my lifestyle or writing methods.
Then I found Hugo and blogging became a very real thing that fit me and my lifestyle. I can write articles of varying length and depth and I can have a blog that is a bit more personal and reflective of my life.
Blogging fits the personal brand I am working towards establishing as I now have a location for expressing thoughts, ideas, and details for a variety of subjects and finding ways to group those subjects by tags etc.
As mentioned - I wanted the ability to dive deep on a subject. I plan to continue to write for a variety of different topics but one of those is going to be technical. Having the same medium for everything keeps the experience consistent for me.
Consistency
The big elephant in the room - as I have attempted to build others things in the public-eye in my free time before and had varying rates of success.
Find a target and work to your best ability to stay consistent. Take this article for example. I didn’t have it staged and already written awaiting for it to be published. Rather I woke up early this morning (the day of it being published) and wrote the bulk of it such that I could add details throughout the day and get it published within my defined constraints which are anytime on Monday and Thursday. So maybe I hold off until after the kids are in bed on Monday night to publish it - will the LinkedIn algorithm hate me? probably. Will I still have met my personal consistency objective? absolutely.
Define your own target - start small and work from there as you find out how you can be consistent. I listened to a cycling podcast this weekend that highlighted consistency in the same capacity - consistency will make or break your progress towards goals. No matter if you have the best content planned - if you are not consistent then you will likely fall off the rails and find yourself having not written any content in weeks or more.
Conclusion
Hopefully you found this post useful. It is my take on why others might consider blogging and what to consider as you take a leap of faith into putting yourself out into the public with your own thoughts of how you understand things today. Maybe you’ll be wrong - but if you have the goal of learning more and being open to being wrong - then you’ll go a long way and have evidence to show your growth.