Why Do I Have A Blog Anyway?

I don’t get much blog traffic. Oh, I have in the past. Particularly when I blogged under a nom de plume on a snarky political site. Lately, however, I’ve tried to steer the blog away from all politics. And in doing so, I don’t think I’ve found my voice.

What is “The Write Side of My Brain” all about? I recently changed the tagline to read “Musings of a Renaissance Dad.” Because, after all, I’m a dad interested in many things.

But is that my voice?

It’s not the voice that’s going to make me a wildly successful blogger and generate enough income for me to walk away from my day job.

So why blog?

Mainly it’s because I do need to have my voice on the web. I write elsewhere for pay and that’s a good thing. Yet, I’m writing what someone else wants written. It sounds like me writing it, but the ideas are rarely original.

So again, why this blog?

When Google+ came on the horizon, Chris Brogan said “I’m not giving up my blog for Tumblr, Google+ or any other real estate that’s not mine to build on, nor should you, unless you just want a transient place to write.”

That’s it. This blog is my own personal real estate on the web. While property values may be in the tank, I have to believe that can turn around.

Are there benefits of personal blogging?

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger thinks so. Rowse says, “One of the biggest benefits from my own personal blogging was that over a year or so I gradually began to discover the niches that I then wanted to blog about entrepreneurial. Over time I began writing more and more about gadgets (and a series of blogs was spawned off) and then I started writing about blogging (and this blog was born). I wrote about other topics and didn’t go on with them – but it was only through having a personal blog where I could write about anything at all that I began to see what clicked for me in terms of topic.”

I think that’s where I am. I’m trying out different topics and perspectives to see where this leads.

For now I’m fine that I’m being paid elsewhere and The Write Side of My Brain can be a placeholder. But I want it to be more than a place where I link to the work of others. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others take care of that just fine. For the record, I still just don’t get Tumblr.

I also need to be about building a better personal brand for my blog.

Hope Clark who writes Funds for Writers and is a successful suspense author, among other things, asks, “If I’m at your site for the first time, thanks to some off-the-wall link from somebody’s Facebook page, how many seconds will it take for me to know your name?”

I’m working on that. My name is on my about page, and my posts are signed with “Michael.” Do I need more?

So, I’m on a journey to find that voice, no to find my voice. Hopefully I’ll find it here on these pages.

I hope you’ll join me on that journey.

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings