I’m only thankful that I had the time, effort, support and encouragement to reflect,write and blog about my once-in-a-lifetime experiences, new knowledge and the ups-and-downs. It’s the power of sharing that keeps me on track and stay focus on my goals in life as I know you guys (you know who you are!) will be watching my back and provide me with beneficial feedbacks. And that’s my main motivation in blogging. It’s a form of a personal diary where I document my experiences and knowledge gain. This is essentially what blogging is all about – sharing.
But over the years, the blogosphere has evolve. Suddenly, commercial websites, online magazines and other social media websites got blurred with blog sites. People are tapping on their own blogs to make money, gain instant and one of the ways to do it to increase their online traffic flow, gaining more page views and finding ways to popularize their blogs. That’s when numbers and stats becomes a sensitive issue. How successful you are as a blogger is define by the number of followers and likes you have on your social media website. The larger the figures, the more dollar signs you will see in the eyeballs of the advertisers and public relation companies.
That’s nothing wrong with people pursuing this route of gaining status in the social media world and it certainly does make sense that if you have a wider audience, more people are likely to know or even purchase the product which you’ve just reviewed on or visit that cafe where you’ve just hop to. However, the true essence and the heart of blogging is missing. That personal voice is intertwined with fears and other emotions of wanting to please both your readers as well as the brand. To be really honest, at some point of time in my blogging journey, I was also swept away with this trend of blogging to please others in order to be well-like.
While getting caught in the whirlwind of gaining publicity, I suddenly came to this realization of why I should just stood firm and cut the chase. It was triggered by one of the owners of an eatery whom I was collaborating with, who asked me this pertinent question that really woke me up.
He said, “Who are you writing for? “
“For myself.” I replied.
“How is it possible to be writing for yourself? You should be writing for your readers so that more people will visit your blog,” he said in this matter-of-fact tone to me.
No.
Seriously? I am not running an online magazine or newspaper here and my aim of blogging is to cater to the masses, really. Blogging is my outlet of creativity. It’s akin to a playground or almost like a sketchbook where experiment with, write what I feel and document those precious moments in my life. And if I like what I see, taste or use, I would love to share it with others. That’s my blogging philosophy and I don’t need someone to tell me what I should do to be on par with the other mainstream bloggers. I am never a celebrity blogger and I don’t aim to be one.
I am not blinded by figures and I am cool if my blog doesn’t appear to be as popular as other commercialized blogs. So dear advertisers, I hope you would not drop us an email requesting us to state our stats to see if we could meet your expectations. Then turn a blind eye and ignore our mails when you discover we are just one of the small fries in this media industry. Bloggers are not professional journalists or editors who writes for a living. We are just part of the public masses or like any average Singaporean walking along orchard road. That is the sole reason why people read blogs for that personal touch and credibility rather than reading commercialized website that might be biased.
The greatest takeaway for me throughout this whole blogging journey is never to let others define who you are and do not fall into the trap of allowing the media and societal pressures to mould and alter you to fit into our society’s jigsaw puzzle of success. To not be the next cookie-cutter is to search deeper meaning in what you are blogging for.
Going back to the heart of blogging is my way of keeping me grounded and focus in what I’m blogging for.
