This post belongs to the Strategic Blogging Series.
13 years ago when I started studying my Marketing degree the focus of many of my first year lectures was ‘Mission Statements’. I remember writing mission statement after statement – to the point where I started to dream about them. It was obvious that my lecturers through they were a pretty important starting place for any good business venture.
Whilst perhaps ‘mission statements’ are not quite as much of a buzz phrase as they were in the early 1990s I still see asking questions around mission as a worthwhile task – especially when it comes to blogging.
‘Why do you exist?’
This is the key question that my friend’s strategic process asks in the area of ‘mission’. I don’t think it’s asking us to ponder the meaning of life – it’s not quite that deep – but it does ask a business (blog) owner to try to get back to the basics of what they are on about.
‘Why do you blog?’
Take a few minutes (or better still a few hours or even days) to ponder this question. What is it that you blog for? What are your core motivations? Be honest as you answer this question because it’s important to nail it down as much as you can as everything else comes from this.
Some blogging ‘missions’ might include:
- ‘I blog to make a living’
- ‘I blog for recreational purposes – to help me relax’
- ‘I blog as part of my plan for world domination’
- ‘I blog to keep a record of the life and times of me’
- ‘I blog because I want to help others’
- ‘I blog to because I’m lonely and want to connect with others’
- ‘I blog to pick up cute girls/guys’
- ‘I blog because it’s fun’
- ‘I blog because I want to build profile – I want to be known’
These are just a few examples that come to mind off the top of my head. Some of us will have simple sentences, for others our reasons for blogging might be a little more complex and combine a number of things.
One person’s blogging mission will be differnt from anothers – there is really no right or wrong here – behind each blogger there is some sort of mission whether it’s deep, shallow, silly, smart, selfish or altruistic. The task now is to name yours.
To identify these missions is very helpful because knowing why we blog then helps us to work out how we should blog to best reach our mission.
So what is your mission? Why do you blog?
This is not a question about measurable goals or strategies and your answer probably shouldn’t be too blog specific yet (ie don’t write one for each of your blogs if you have more than one) – rather get at your motivations and big picture hopes for your blogging.
Read more posts in this series at Strategic Blogging Series.
