While I’ve already discussed the pros and cons of blogging as compared to writing articles in an article about blogs vs articles, one of the topics I failed to treat altogether are the pros and cons of blogging as compared to doing nothing at all.
The question of whether or not to write anything at all tends to be what people want to answer first before they bother delving into the semantics of blogs vs article based websites. So what are the pros and cons of blogging?
Pros
- You get your very own soap-box - We’ll see this one again in the cons section, but a blog really is a wonderful tool for you to use to bring other people’s attention to issues that are of importance to you.
- You get to practice writting - If you write more, you will learn more. I’m not saying that a blog is a substitute for an English degree, but as with most skills, if you practice writing, you will get better at it. At the end of the day, the ability to write properly will serve you in all facets of life
- Contact with friends, family and/or community - Whether you’re on the adventure of a lifetime or just have some physical distance between yourself and your loved ones, a blog can really help bridge the gap. Similarly if you are involved in a community, for example do it yourself guitar pedal builders, a blog can be a great way to reach out to all others in your community and initiate some dialogue through user comments.
- Financial gain? - I add the question mark because for most bloggers, monetizing their blog is a challenge with often little reward. That being said, approximately 1% of bloggers are making money by blogging. Please note that I’ve listed this last beceause if you start blogging to get rich, you will likely be terribly disapointed.
Cons
- You get your very own soap-box - Yes, this is as much a disadvantage as it is an advantage. The ability to bring awareness to important issues can quickly be diluted by a flurry of rants and raves against anything that happens to be bothering you that day. Be it the driver who cut you off or the fast food restaurant that messed up your order, it’s vital to resist the urge to turn your blog into a daily complaint against everything that has crossed your path in order for your genuine complaints and concerns to hold any water.
- Anyone can (and eventually will) read your blog - If you don’t have a reliable self-censor, you may quickly find yourself deleting posts and/or appologizing to people you know. The web is littered with stories of people who have lost their job because of something they wrote on their blog. This is not to say that you can’t blog about work, but your self-censor needs to kick in long before you write a tirade about how incompetent you feel your co-workers are and about how the Q4 numbers are down the tubes because of insert name here. Similarly, remember that family, friends and loves ones all have fair access to everything you write.
- It requires work - If you hope to build a good blog with solid reasership and steady traffic, you’re going to have to write often and write well. This isn’t to say that you won’t have a period of time where you’re writing less frequently or not at all, but rather that over the long haul, you’ll need to be putting in a fair amount of effort into your blog.
That concludes my personal list of pros and cons of blogging. It’s certainly not a complete list and I encourage you to seek out what others have to say on the topic. You start with the following links that discuss what other groups of people have to say on the topic.
- Dads on pros and cons of blogging
- Moms on pros and cons of blogging
- Authors on pros and cons of blogging
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