What Are the Benefits of Setting Up Personal Blog
What Are the Benefits of Setting Up Personal Blog? In its primitive stage, blogging was essentially a glorified form of online journaling where people who had access to a computer and an internet connection, could share their ideas, thoughts, opinions and life stories with the online community.
This form of blogging is still relevant and is called personal blogging where the blogger shares his/her personal opinions, stories and thoughts that he/she is comfortable enough to share with the whole world.
In this article, we will be discussing what is a personal blogging and what it takes to build a successful personal blog. But before that, I need you all to understand a few facts and figures.
There are more than 150 million blogs out there. More than 172,800 new blogs are created daily. The blogosphere seems like an overpopulated digital space. The reason behind this congested arena lies in the fact that blogging can prove to be one of the most engaging and rewarding types of professions if pursued with all sincerity and dedication. There is no shortage of content on the internet.
However, most of this content falls flat when judged on the parameters like quality, consistency, and value. You don’t have to get discouraged with the big numbers I have mentioned in the opening lines. With the right kind of approach, knowledge, and guidance you can attract the right kind of online traffic to your blog, helping you generate good money and build a good online space for your content.
Blogs are essentially online journals where content is put out frequently. The subject of the content varies vastly and mainly depends on the choice of the owner. The purpose of starting a blog is different for different people.
Some wish to share their life experiences, ideas, thoughts, opinions or create awareness regarding sensitive social, economic and political issues. Some people start a blog to build a strong online presence for a brand or business organization they are associated with. Some people start a blog to promote and build a purely online business from scratch.
Whatever is your reason to start a blog, you should know that achieving your goals out of blogging and becoming a successful blogger is not a cakewalk, especially in the initial stage. You have to put out quality content consistently to stay relevant in the overpopulated blogosphere. The subject of your content has to stand out and deliver the promised value to its users.
One of the most effective ways to add value to your content is to add a personal touch to it. Inclusion of personal experience, story and learned lessons wins the trust of the readers. Every online reader is on a quest to land content that demonstrates the personal experiences of an individual regarding different major components of their life.
It can be related to their mental health, physical well-being, career choices or an account of their struggles, tragedies, and their coping mechanisms.
One needs to understand the psychology behind the attraction of online traffic towards personal content. Humans, in general, have an affinity to know other humans on a personal level. The reason behind this behaviour lies in the fact that we are social animals. Our species continues to thrive because of the mutual sharing of information, knowledge, ideas, experiences.
Knowing the life experiences of like-minded bloggers, arms the online readers to make well-informed, well-educated and well-rounded personal choices which, in turn, later works to improve the quality of their lives, further increasing their level of life satisfaction and happiness. They say the smarter ones do not waste their time experimenting with life. The smarter ones learn from the results gained by another individual who conducted that life experiment.
We also need to understand the inclination of the bloggers towards putting out content on the subject of their personal life experiences. It is just not the value that the reader gains out of such personal content published by the blogger, it is also about how putting out such content helps the blogger cope up with his/her own emotional, physical or social baggage.
A personal blog, for that reason, works to create mutual benefits for both the readers and the content creator. However, before you plan to start a personal blog, it is important to consider the following aspects of working to create a successful personal blog;
Understanding the limitations posed by a personal blog
Writing on a personal blog is an excellent exercise to stabilize an unstable thought process. Writing helps people to vent out, to bluntly state their fears, insecurities and clearly understand their source of anxiety. Writing greatly helps people, suffering from clinical depression or any other kind of mental disorder to cope up with their situation.
It provides them with a channel of escapism from their unstable mindset and provides them with an engaging space to constructively reflect on their circumstances and maybe even, help them devise ways to improve the quality of their mental health. Writing on a personal blog helps people suffering in their professional or personal life to channelize their thoughts and fears and structure them into something valuable.
If you want to start a personal blog and put out content that helps you to cope up with your degrading mental health conditions due to professional or personal instability, you are most welcome to do. But you also need to understand its limitations. People suffering from depression and other mental health issues should not use personal blogging as an exclusive means to deal with their illness.
Visiting a certified and trusted therapist should be the priority and putting content on a personal blog should complement this regular visit to the therapist. People suffering from major instability in their personal or professional life should prioritize professionally relevant counselling to eliminate the instability out of their lives.
- Understand the difference between sharing and oversharing.
There is a thick line between sharing personal information and over-sharing personal information on a personal blog but many people choose to overlook this difference. You need to understand how this content will affect your life and the people who are close to you.
You need to consider the negative consequences if your personal information is used in an unfavourable and unethical manner. Make sure the information you put online won’t harm you or your people. You need also consider the impact of that content in the relationship you share with your family and friends.
You need to take into consideration the sentiments of a community or organization while crafting content on sensitive subjects like religion, politics and social issues.
Avoid aimless blogging
Before you start a personal blog, you need to outline the purpose of doing so. You need to have a clear understanding of the objectives to be achieved by putting out personal content on your blog.
Putting random content without a well-defined strategy will amount to nothing. Even if you are writing entirely for personal reasons, blogging aimlessly will amount your efforts to nothing. You will lose track of your progress. So, it is highly advisable to have some sort of regularity and structure to your content strategy.
Know the risks and be prepared
Data is the new currency. As a blogger, you will be more open to cyber risks than an average internet user which is why your online safety and privacy should be a major concern. Activities of hacktivism and extortion where people hack your website, bank accounts or hold your blog hostage in exchange for steep money are on the rise.
These people through their ill motives can create a great dent in your reputation and personal privacy and even physical safety. Activities like these also affect the mental health of the blogger. You need to devise an exhaustive plan to avoid such circumstances.
You, as an owner of a personal blog, need to take precautionary measures to safeguard your privacy and psychological well-being. Using domain privacy, getting a google voice number and securing and backing up your website is highly recommended. Also, setting up unique and secure passwords for all websites is a necessity.
Be careful what you write about
There are cases where bloggers who wrote provoking posts on sensitive social, economic, religious, political issues have faced criminal trials, mainly for hurting the sentiments of a social group or for baselessly defaming eminent personalities. You need to strongly take into consideration these aspects before you embark on a journey of creating a successful personal blog.
Now that we have an idea about the preventive measures you need to take before you start a personal blog, let’s move ahead.
I will like to now discuss more on the benefits that one can reap out of dedicating their time, energy and attention to personal blogging.
A platform for constructively channelling emotions
Writing what you are feeling and experiencing on a personal blog can immensely help you to channelize your emotions healthily. When you write something for people to read, you subconsciously craft the content in excruciating details to facilitate a deep and clear understanding of the situation at hand. This allows you to reflect on the small details of the initially overlooked component of the issue.
This reflection then allows you to clearly understand what you are feeling and further helps you rationalize your irrational thoughts which generally are the root cause of the restlessness. Starting a personal blog and putting up content regularly is a great way to constructively engage yourself. Studies have proved that personal blogging has proved to be a stress buster. It has also produced remarkable results in reducing anxiety and other depressive symptoms.
The public nature of a personal blog open opportunities for not just constructive reflection but also provides space for social support which is otherwise quite difficult to get for an introverted individual. Writing for a personal blog has also proved to produce results that promote physical well-being. It reduces arthritis, asthma symptoms, lowers blood pressure, heart rate and also helps to sleep better.
Writing helps to sharpen cognitive functioning
The human brain is made of a billion networks of neurons and is like a muscle that needs constant exercise to stay fit. Writing is like an exercise to the human brain. It helps it to stay healthy and sharp. In use it or lose it fashion, the human brain demands such exercises to stay at the top of its game.
It is therefore quite safe to consider that writing sharpens the part of the brain that promotes logical reasoning and understanding. Writing for a personal blog has also proved to be quite beneficial to decrease the reaction time of writers to emergencies.
People who write personal content for the readers on a regular tend to have a better understanding of the needs, desires, fears, insecurities, and source of anxieties of his/her readers. Writers who put regular content on their blogs tend to be more empathetic. Personal blogging is a glorified form of online journaling.
If you look into it, the most successful people of all time had the habit of journaling. If you take a close look into the daily routine of such people, you will that they have an exclusive time assigned for journaling. For the same reasons, Neuroscientists and therapists highly recommend journaling for mental wellness.
Personal blogging helps to build a strong social support system
Not every individual is an extrovert. Some people find it difficult to effectively communicate their feelings, ideas, and opinions verbally. A lot goes through the mind of such people. Such thoughts direly need a venting channel. Writing for a personal blog is a great way for introverts and below-average communicators to make their voices heard.
A personal blog helps such people to also engage in constructive conversation with like-minded people. It helps them to get a different perspective and at times also build a strong social support system that is not possible for them to have, in the physical world. At times, the best cure for any kind of crisis is human support.
Many bloggers use a personal blog to narrate their life stories; their achievements, regrets and what-ifs. At times, all that bloggers need is validation from his/her community of readers. A constructive dialogue between the readers and the blogger also helps in the healthy exchange of life-altering suggestions and advice. It helps either party to gain better exposure and perspective towards different issues.
Personal blogging helps to make a difference
Personal blogging allows you to share your passion with the world. It gives you a reason to stay engaged and make an impact on the world using your expertise and interest in a particular subject. Further, it also provides space for the healthy exchange of information and feedback which plays a huge role in contributing to your domain of knowledge and the quality of content you publish on the personal blog.
For instance, you have a strong belief system that supports a social, economic, political or educational cause. You can start a personal blog and put up content related to a cause that you care about. It is a great way to create large scale awareness amongst the masses.
It also helps you build a good reputation and credibility in the field of your interest. There are many examples of blogs that put out relevant content on social causes. They publish interviews of experts, report ground conditions and further work to create a positive pressure on the authorities to carry the improvisation activities further.
Then, some blogs publish politically neutral content. This unbiased information empowers the voters to make a well-educated choice of their representatives and strengthen the functioning of democracy in the country.
Personal blogging helps you refine your writing skills
Writing is an art, one can become extremely good at by writing more. If you commit to yourself to publish content on your blog regularly, not only it will help you sharpen your cognitive skills, it will also improve your writing skills. It will further hone your proofreading capacities and provide you with an experienced outlook towards pointing out errors.
It will give you a deep understanding of the common writing mistakes that you and other people make. This will further help you to step up your game and produce well-written and well-crafted, high-quality content that the readers will read with great enthusiasm. The truth is that it is not necessary to be a stellar writer if you want to build a successful personal blog. Most of the bloggers, initially are average writers.
They get good at their writing with time, perseverance and with their openness to accept constructive feedback. Most successful bloggers also read a lot to further become better writers. If you want to become a better writer through blogging, it won’t happen any soon if you are not willing to put in the required efforts.
You need to develop a habit of publishing content as frequently as possible and further sticking to the editorial calendar is a necessity to stay at the top of your game.
Personal blogging helps you to improve your communication skills.
Crafting content for your blog requires you to think hard and develop a mental narrative around the words you are typing. It pushes you to go over and over the details of a particular life experience and effectively arrange those memories and events in words.
You can’t afford to miss even a single detail if you wish to convey the story to the readers who have absolutely no background knowledge of the incident. It is also a fact that you cannot expect to speak fluently about a subject if you are not armed with the required in-depth details.
It is worth noticing that the topics or subjects you can effectively explain through a write-up, are also the subjects you can speak about fluently. Truth is, the fear of public speaking also stems from the insecurity of not knowing about a topic well enough. As you get into the practice of publishing content on your blog, you will start to notice some positive changes.
You will notice that you have become a better communicator who effectively explains situations and subjects to people. One of the most positive by-products of effective communicator proves to be your better understanding of people on a fundamental level.
Personal blogging helps you to under human behaviour better
A personal blog provides you with an opportunity to interact with people that visit your blog. These people can be from different corners of the world, with different backgrounds, religions, primary language, mindset, profession and belief systems. A constructive exchange of information between you and these readers provide an alternative perspective to things in life.
This two-way conversation also provides you with knowledge and information that you would have otherwise never known. Interaction of this sort also helps you to build virtual relationships, friendships and a reliable social support system that will immensely help you to grow as an individual.
The kind of exposure you get out of such conversation is also extremely valuable in deepening your understanding of human behaviour and you can further use this knowledge to craft more high-quality content that is engaging and valuable for your readers.
Not only will this knowledge help you to increase the visibility of your blog, but it will also empower you to build better human connections in your physical world. Understanding human behaviour is one such knowledge that helps you stand out of the crowd and gather more positive attention towards yourself which can further help to build credibility in the relevant field.
Personal blogging is great to build a personal brand
Starting a personal blog and putting out content on your life experiences, lessons can help you build a feeling of trust and reliability with your readers. It will help you build a narrative around your life that readers can relate to and get inspired from.
Your honest content will also help the readers learn from your mistakes and allow them to make better and wise choices in life. All these things further allow the readers to build an even deeper interpersonal relationship with you. Such trust and reliability can increase the chance of the emergence of your brand that you can further constructively use to earn credibility, respect, and money.
Personal blogging is the best way to build a personal brand because it provides opportunities to show off your expertise in your chosen field. A strong personal brand is especially useful if you wish to build a business or simply want to monetize your blog.
However, building a personal brand isn’t a cakewalk. You need to be honest and diplomatic to a permissible degree when crafting content. Your content should be high quality that helps your position yourself in a niche. It is also very important that your online persona matches your real-world persona. Any loophole in that match can land you in great trouble.
Personal blogging can help you earn good money
Starting a personal blog and putting out high quality and valuable content can help you attract the right kind of traffic to the blog. The first step to keep in mind if you want to make money out of blogging is to craft content that google Bots will love. Applying effective search engine optimization techniques to the write-up helps the blog rank higher in search engine results, which in turn will attract large traffic and allow money-making to become a cakewalk for you. You can place ads on the blog or sell online products that deliver high value to its exclusive members.
Personal blogging is a great way to build an online portfolio
Starting a personal blog and putting out relevant content is the first step for aspiring authors, novelists, freelance writers to build a good online portfolio. Blogging is the right and the most productive way to showcase your writing skills and prove your worth as a writer.
Blogging also provides a wide array of opportunities for the writer to get better writing opportunities by publishers and editors. Not only it provides better opportunities for the writers, but it also gives me the initial space to become a fully matured professional writer who understands the dynamics of crafting effective content.
Personal blogging allows amateur writers to understand the needs, desires, requirements, fears, and insecurities of the readers and accordingly craft content that addresses these issues and provides the audience with practical solutions.
Personal blogging also helps them to engage in constructive conversation with their readers and further increase their exposure. A fairly successful blog showers the blogger with many high profiles writing dream jobs. It demonstrates the effectiveness of his/her write-ups and the capability to engage the readers for a longer period.
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