What Is the Purpose of a Blog Post?
When people are new to blogging and they are trying to
research what makes a good blog post or how to improve their blog’s performance
measures through their content, a certain type of advice comes up almost every
time.
“Write the BEST content on your article’s topic.”
“Make your article better than every other article on the
web.”
“Make your post the definitive, most detailed resource
available.”
“If someone finds your article, they shouldn’t need to look
for any other information anywhere else because your post will be so complete
that they will have learned all they need to learn about the subject.”
This is a wildly intimidating goal to set for your content,
and unfortunately, while the intention of setting a lofty goal is that you will
end up achieving better results for it, what most often happens is that you
will develop a fear of failure and that will prevent you from even starting.
Which is the worst possible outcome. Even a failure that gets finished is a
learning experience that can teach you how to do better next time.
When you
never start, or never finish, any projects, then you will never learn anything
or get anywhere.
So, to help promote action in others, I’d like to explain
what I believe a blog post’s purpose can be.
A post can be nothing more than
your expression of opinion on a given topic. You will write a better piece if
you have knowledge about what you are writing, and if you include detail along
the way, but it doesn’t need to be an exhaustive encyclopedia entry.
You can
mention the information you want to speak on and exclude the bits you don’t
have much to say about. When this is how you write a blog post, then you are
really beginning a conversation with the readers.
You create a thesis, then you
write sentences and paragraphs in support of your thesis, and then you encourage
readers to respond in the comments section or on social media.
You are adding your perspective to the eternal conversation
or debate on that topic. Your readers will appreciate that perspective, because
it could be novel, eye-opening, or new to them.
And just because the reader found and read your article
doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t read other articles on the exact same subject.
A person who reads multiple articles on a subject isn’t someone who was
necessarily unsatisfied in each but the final article. They will likely gain something
more from each successive article, and they might just enjoy reading about that
topic.
Other than some very simple questions that require a very
simple and constant answer (such as ‘How many ounces in a gallon’ or ‘What date
is Christmas’), most subjects allow for nuance and opinion and the reader will
benefit from additional research.
Think to some topic you consider a hobby and which you have researched
online. For me the subject might be internet marketing or blogging. I have read
hundreds of articles with nearly the same title and information. But I’ve
enjoyed reading most of them, and I continue to seek out more because I enjoy
the process of reading about what I am interested in.
And, I would be very disappointed
if nobody every wrote about those subjects again because they figured that
anything of value had already been written.
If there weren’t new and fresh content
in those subject areas all the time, I would be let down.
Is that experience
similar to you and the hobby you’ve pictured yourself researching? I bet it is.
And it’s like that for most people.
Writing a blog post on something that’s been written about
lots before (which at this point is most any topic imaginable) doesn’t mean
that your article is useless or needs to be better than the rest to add value
to readers. Your article will be your version of it. Your article will contain
your opinions. Your article will be valuable because of YOUR perspective and
voice.
Please, if you feel even a slight urge to write about
something, do it.
Don’t be paralyzed with fear. Don’t worry about the
inferiority of your article compared with others.
As long as you aim to write a
good article that you will be proud of and happy to share with others, then your
article will be worth writing and worth reading. The world needs your voice and
perspective. It is waiting for you, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
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