Blogging for the New Year Part 1 – Why Blog?

New year’s resolutions are all well and good in the afterglow of the silly season but despite our best efforts these major life changes are rarely followed through on.

I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to making unrealistic promises to myself. Guilt. How familiar is that guilty feeling when you see the unused gym bag gathering dust in the corner or have just one more biscuit with your mid-morning cup of tea?

Enough pessimism! After all it’s a new year, possibilities are limitless!

This time last year I promised myself I would get fit(fitter) by joining a gym and going to it regularly. I’m glad to report that I’ve achieved this. I now go to the gym for about 8-10hrs a week. Coming from a fairly sedentary existence this has surprised my friends, family and me!

This year one of my resolutions is to blog regularly, 2/3 times a week is my target. But I’ve tried to do this before, countless times and after a good start I always end up neglecting my blog, leaving half-finished articles.

So what’s going to be different this time?

I thought I’d look at the things that helped me become a regular gym goer and try and apply them to blogging. Today I’m going to look at my motivation for blogging.

I believe that clearly defining my motivation for getting fit has been integral to my success in the gym. That and a shed load of sweat!
One step at a time
So I went to the gym to lose weight, get healthy, look good.

All true, but not enough to keep going to the gym week in week out for the past 12 months. There were deeper reason. Deeper reasons.

These reasons provided me with the motivation I needed to get up early every morning, train hard each day and to keep coming back for more.

So now to blogging. On the face of it blogging is a good way to communicate with people – clients, friends, colleagues. But why bother? After all there’s still the phone, email, instant messaging, etc…

But blogging is different. It allows anyone to put their ideas out there, to get noticed, to build interest in what they do and how they do it.

So by writing a blog I hope to get attention for the work I do. I run a website design business and want to attract clients. Writing a blog is a way to promote the work I do and in the current economic environment anything that raises your profile is invaluable.

For me, blogging isn’t easy. I’m not a natural writer, but I am motivated to learn and improve. I see it as an essential part of developing my business.

Motivation isn’t the only thing to get right though, there are other elements to becoming a successful blogger. There is also clearly defining what to blog about. I will look at this in the next article.

I’d appreciate any feedback you may have on this article, you can leave a comment or contact me directly.