Why I Can’t Blog

Blogging is a fantastic way to impart knowledge and share your experiences with fellow web travellers. I love reading, so finding new blogs and people to follow is a real pleasure for me. I read lots of books, but blogs are kind of like my morning newspaper. They have become part of my wake-up routine, my omg-if-I-look-at-this-project-any-longer-my-eyes-will-bleed breaks during the day, and my just-five-more-minutes-of-teh-interwebz before I go to bed.

Blogs feed our natural need to connect with others; to notice and be noticed. They give us a place to launch our opinions, thoughts, and discoveries out into the world. They help us drum up business, reach more potential and current clients than ever before, serve as our sounding board (or our soapbox), satisfy our curiosities, and offer an opportunity to stand beside the experts in our industries.

It seems that blogs are all the rage now and, no doubt, someone or many someones have suggested you add one to your website or start a stand-alone along the way. I’m sure you’ve come up with a whole host of excuses as to why NOT to start one, too. Let’s see how they stand up.

I’m not a good writer.

Good news! You don’t really have to be. Most of us made it past eighth grade English and know how to order a coffee at Starbucks, so it’s safe to say you know how to string a pretty good sentence together. We don’t need Lewis Carroll. We already have that. Almost any word-processing program and blog can help with your spelling (or make for a really awesome “Horrors of Auto-correct” post), and most of the former even give you pointers on grammar. Just write, and then write some more. Show it to lots of people, and put it out there. That’s how you become a good writer.

I have nothing interesting to say.

Bull. Everyone has something to say. And, chance are, there is someone out there who will find it interesting. Write about what you know. Our best work comes from what we’ve seen, done, and learned along the way. The words come quickly and are free-flowing this way.

Let’s say you flip burgers for a living (not judging, just saying). I’ll bet you’ve got some stories! I’ll also bet you know the fastest way to get the job done, and some real horror stories about safety precautions gone awry. Write about it. I’d totally read it (especially if you make funny first-grade drawings to go with it; that doesn’t always work for everyone though). Stop thinking about it as “writing” and start thinking about it as telling a story to your friends. Write what you would say out loud, and say it while you type it.

If you aren’t convinced, here’s some more food for thought: Kendra Wilkinson wrote a book. And, by wrote, I mean hired someone to write it for her (you could always do that, too). People read it. Someone—not me—cares about what she has to say. I’m sure whatever you have to say would be profoundly more interesting.

I’m not tech-savvy enough to handle it.

I’ve got a little story to combat this one. My grandma used to say the same thing about anything computer-related, but give her some type of kitchen gadget and she’d figure it out before you could open the directions to page one. And, I’m here to tell you that some of those kitchen things are confusing as all get out. There were items I must have tinkered with for a good thirty minutes before she came over and had it doing whatever magical task it was supposed to do in about three seconds flat. Now, there is no way that anyone with that kind of mental capacity can have a hard time figuring just about anything else out. It’s only a matter of applying it in a new direction. 

You don’t need to be super tech-savvy to pull this off. Many of the most popular free blogging platforms are incredibly intuitive—that’s why they are the most popular! Tumblr is one of the easiest in my opinion to get you started. After that, there is Blogger, Wordpress, Posterous, etc. They all rock, and even have more advanced capabilities should you need them one day.

Fight back.

What are some of the other reasons you’ve come up with for NOT having a blog? Drop off a comment below!

Blogging isn’t for everyone, but don’t let your reasons stem from fear, failure, or some other self-esteem monster. So, as I told my grandma, knock it off! You got this!