Quite often I see announcements from people who have decided to give up on blogging. Sometimes it’s because other things have become a priority and there is no time or inclination to keep the blog going. Other cases, however, cite lack of engagement as a reason to transfer from their own blog to, for example, other platforms where followers can be more easily gained or interacted with. Perhaps you may be wondering why bloggers continue their endeavours, while huge social media companies are pulling everyone in and causing a decline in small interactive websites. It’s really a question of what an individual hopes to gain from blogging.
First and foremost, I blog for myself. It can’t be denied that having an audience does help me to refine my writing style, but the blog is here for me to pour my thoughts and experiences into. Would I write so much if it was all in a private notebook or electronic file not intended to be shared online? I highly doubt it. As for engagement, I appreciate it when people comment on my blog posts, share them and are up for discussions. It’s true that engagement seems to be declining, for which there could be a variety of reasons. However, I get many visits to my blog and I gain more subscribers almost every day, so I know for sure that people are reading the blog and hopefully gaining knowledge or entertainment from the content.
I originally set up my blog in 2018, intending it to be a promotional tool for when I became a published author (finally achieving this purpose in 2021 with my first novel) but as a book fanatic I wanted a place to share my honest reviews and which I could personalise. Not limiting myself to book reviews, bookish features and updates on my literary career, I also blog about films, music, research and random things. I love having my own blog and I think there is something special about having one’s own little website which, although part of a community of blogs (WordPress) is not merely a snippet to be swiped on a social media app along with millions of others. I use social media to promote the blog, not the other way around. I fear that our attention spans in general are becoming shorter and that contemporary technology is to blame. Why read a thousand word blog post when you could scroll through video clips instead? Media everywhere is becoming increasingly audio-visual, making blocks of written text seem rather old-fashioned and not worth expending brain-power on. Or is that the appeal? Not everyone wants to watch and listen. They want to read the words on the page.
That’s all I’m saying about blogging for now. Now, back to the book reviewing…
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