Is there value in a blog?

I have a really bad cold & chest infection!! What does this have to do with blogging I hear you ask!? Well, it is very early in the morning, some might argue it’s still the middle of the night, and I am wide awake following a sneezing and coughing moment and now I can’t get back to sleep.

So while sipping my hot lemon and honey drink I decided to have a look at my blog and see if anyone had read the latest post or left any comments.

While a little disappointed, I am not surprised that while 18 people viewed my first post (following a post on Instagram) only 1 viewed my second, and to be honest I think that 1 view was me!!

This led me to ask myself - is there any value in blogging? it can be quite a time consuming activity. It used to be all the rage and it seemed like everyone had a blog of some description or another. Some have made serious money from their blogs.

A google search informed me that personal blogging is now a thing of the past and has been replaced with ‘content marketing’. The difference - personal blogging is writer focused whereas content marketing is more reader focused.

Content marketing looks to provide solutions to the readers problems. One of its main aims in business is to bring in new leads and ultimately more business by solving the readers problems.

My immediate thought was one of dread, and I instantly worried about what I was going to write about. I don’t want to feel pressured into having to think about content in order to drive traffic to my website. Clearly I didn’t think through what starting a blog would involve!

Don’t get me wrong an increase in sales is always a small businesses aim, but do I really need the added stress on top of everything else. After all, just trying to find content for my social media posts is hard enough.

I want a space where I could record my thoughts, ideas and plans somewhere. Each year I try to complete a personal diary and each year I stop after a few well meaning days.

I think some of my procrastination around a hand written diary is I am accountable to no one but myself. ‘If I don’t achieve it, it’s ok because no one knows and no one is going to read it’.

This year on New Year’s Eve i had the urge to write a personal diary again!! This time I wanted to record my progress within both my business as well as my development as a small business owner.

So I have decided to use this space as my ‘personal blog / diary’ and use it as a space to record the trails and tribulations of running a small lanyard business.

Placing this ‘diary blog’ on my website means there is a risk that someone might actually read it other then me and make comments.

I am hoping that the risk of other people reading this will hold me accountable to record my development regularly.

So to answer my original question, yes there is value in me creating this blog. This will provide a diary of events that I can look back on in years to come should I fulfil my dream of becoming a bigger go-to business for safety breakaway lanyards.

I have no plans to advertise these blogs, it will be interesting to see if I get any true organic traffic.

If you are not me and you have read this post, thank you x