If You Could Blog About Anything, What Would You Blog About?
In an interview recently, I was asked, “If you could blog about anything, what would you blog about?”
This question struck me to my heart. I’ve been blogging, or web publishing as we originally called it, for over 14 years and I blog about what I want to blog about – but do I really? Do you?
So often, we blog for the wrong reasons. Wrong might not be the correct term, but we blog for reasons that do not respond well to that question. We blog for money, fame, attention, social interaction, freedom of speech, defense, business, and reasons that maybe good and justifiable, but not the really right reasons.
To blog consistently about any subject, you have to enjoy it. Or it has to give you a reward that justifies your continual time and effort to blog. In Drilling Down Your Blogging Niche, I wrote:
In one year, will you have run out of things to write about blogging? Will it still hold fascination for you? What about in two years? Five?
More specifically, in one year, releasing three posts a week, you will have published 156 blog posts. In two years, that’s 312. What if you want to publish five times a week? One year, that’s 260, and two years that’s 520 blog posts. Do you have 520 things you can write about on blogging?
If you can come up with 520 things to write about on your blog on a particular subject, you would have to enjoy blogging on that subject, right?
So what is your answer to the question? If you could blog about anything, what would you really blog about? And if you aren’t, why aren’t you blogging your passion?
The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.
If I could, I’d blog about worldwide public transportation – buses and subways/rail. It’s my passion.
@allen stern:
Fascinating. What aspect most gets you excited? The building of the vehicles, transportation systems, the timing and scheduling…there are a lot of issues around this, so what about it jazzes you up?
If I didn’t think I’d be totally embarrased by the attempt I think I’d want to serialize a novel. Say a new chapter a week. But I truly don’t think I have the focus or a thick enough skin to endure it.
I always enjoy your posts, Lorelle. They’re always challenging (in the good kind of way) and give me something to think about. Keep it up.
Generally, I do blog about what I want to blog about. The limiting factors most often are either time or that I’ve chosen to censor myself.
Occasionally, I start a blog about sometime very timely and then discard it when I discover I’m too far behind the curve and it’s no longer really new news.
But more often than not, I hold myself back from mouthing off on topics that’re just a little too touchy or that my opinion is too far from the norm on and would likely cause me more grief than it’d be worth. For example, as a new dad, I have some very strong ideas about certain parenting issues that would not be especially popular or go far with making (or keeping) friends. Sometimes, those hot button issues are best left analog…
@Rob O.:
Having a child definitely redefines the legacy you leave behind on the web, doesn’t it? :D
It would be so time consuming. It’s difficult to write a topic that you are not so familiar with, it requires a lot of research and more reading.