When I first began to dream about being a blogger, the objective, the business plan and my vision of success could all be summed up in a single sentence. I’d write stuff, people would find me and if they liked me enough, I’d write a book. That’s how it happened in Julie & Julia after all. Julie wasn’t racking her brain to come up with a clever Instagram caption or spending what little extra time she had between work, marriage and cooking gourmet cuisine to schedule tweets and pins. I don’t recall her doing anything for her blog other than what she loved to do – write.
So that’s what I set out to do. Write about things that interested me and things that seemed to be interesting to other people and wait for those people to happen upon my non-SEO-friendly blog. I had no niche and no idea that I was supposed to be of some type of service to someone. I just loved to write and I figured that was good enough. I got the occasional comment from my mom and my sister and a couple bloggers who’d dedicate a couple dozen characters to whatever I’d written before plugging their latest post. I didn’t understand why my blogging dream wasn’t rapidly becoming a reality.
It took a while for me to realize that I a) couldn’t be a hermit like I’d initially hoped and b) had to give my potential readers what they were looking for when they ventured out into the interwebs and over to my blog – value. Nowadays, people want information, experiences, photographs/visuals, engagement and most importantly connection and we the bloggers have to provide all of that while learning SEO, photo editing skills, social media management, whatever the hell authenticity is at the current moment and so much more. And oh, ya know, actually live a full life offline with the people we love.
At first, this realization was kinda discouraging. Doing what I loved meant my introverted self would have to be the outgoing, go-getter type that she wasn’t sure she could be. She’d have to interact with her intended audience as well as fellow bloggers and she’d have to promote herself and her work – both of which she had little faith in – to the entire world on a regular basis. UGH!! She’d also have to learn the ins and outs of all the blogger/influencer/content creator-related things if she wanted to maybe one day write a book.
After a while of stumbling around trying different things and putting myself out there and taking breaks and trying again, I made a few great blogging friends, had real non-familial humans engage with my blog and social media content and learned about the plentiful and amazing blogging-related possibilities that exist other than just writing a book and all because blogging ain’t what it used to be. Suddenly, my dream shifted and the idea of serving other people through writing and researching and experimenting and documenting was more delicious than anything I’d seen Julie or Julia cook up in their respective kitchens. The write-and-wait approach no longer appealed to me and the old school image of a successful blogger that I’d held onto for so long had completely faded away. And I can truly say I’m all the happier for it.
So is the original blogging dream dead? The short answer is yes. We can no longer sit in our PJs in the comfort of our homes and write whatever we want without telling anyone we wrote it and just wait for a ginormous following to drop out of the heavens. Blogging has evolved and our dreams must follow suit. The good news is however, there is increased opportunity and fulfillment for those of us who are willing to leave the traditional blogging dream behind, come out of our comfort zones, put in the extra elbow grease, create connections with some pretty awesome people and embrace the ever-expanding universe that is blogging. And, ok, you can still do a lot of the work in your PJs.
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