Who Should Get to Decide if Your Blog is Truly Valuable?
Chris Garrett guest blogging at Problogger submitted a thought provoking post today and as I wanted to add my 2 cents to the comments I found myself writing so much that I decided it was more relevant as a post as a huge comment. Chris’ question was: Is Your Blog Truly Valuable? and although it is a good question and that he gives some good answers I think it is missing a very important aspect.
After stating that: “Value is tough to pin down. The definition depends entirely on point of view. What is valuable to the creator could be subscribers and AdSense clicks, while the reader could be just looking for a solution to their plumbing leak.” the focus shifts away from what I think is interesting as this absolute statement is made: “What is valuable depends entirely on your audience. Before you work out what you need to create, you need to get inside your audiences head and have a really good poke around.”
I guess you could indeed use an audience based indicator like the revisit ratio (or as like to think about it the difference between visitors and readers) to decide a blogs value. Visitors are no indicator of value as people can be visiting for a whole number of reasons that have nothing to do with value at all. However people revisiting and thus turning into readers would be a strong indicator that you are actually creating something so valuable to someone that they return for more.
However as mentioned is it a matter who you regard to be the best judge of value. The main reason that I started blogging was to start educating myself again. I wanted to use my English skills again, hone my writing skills, motivate myself to relearn things I learned during my education, getting to know new things and people and so on. In essence my reasons for starting a blog are egocentric and thus the only person who can really decide if I succeed creating value would be me.
I am not saying that I don’t want any visitors, readers, commentators and so on, but at the end of the day when I am not happy with the value created then it doesn’t really matter what others think. That the value that I draw from blogging will grow exponentially with the satisfaction of others is probably true as well through. Only is that not what I set out to do nor what motivates me at this point.
If you can create value for others while creating value for yourself then all the better. However if your sole motivation and what defines value for you is the creation of value for others then you might not only struggle defining your purpose and finding your way, but also have difficulty finding true and lasting value for yourself though.
So while it may sound awful I think you have to blog for yourself first and for everyone else second. After all are you the one who have to do almost all the work so you better be satisfied with it or you won’t last long.
In fact I believe the only recipe for creating value for others when blogging is when you create value for yourself at the same time. If you aren’t happy with what you are doing (and how could you be if it isn’t creating anything you value?) how do you imagine what you do will provide something of value to others?
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[…] has an interesting take on my Problogger post “Is Your Blog Truly Valuable?” asking Who Should Get to Decide? If you can create value for others while creating value for yourself then all the better. However […]
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