Good Decision/Bad Decision: Writing a Blog
Good Decision/Bad Decision
Today’s subject will hopefully be part of a regular series of Monday posts. As you recall, I recently started Gratitude Wednesdays. This series will focus on my past decisions to shed light on some financial wins and losses. My hope is to discover what I did right, and help others avoid my mistakes. Whether epic fail or triumphant victory, these were my decisions. The topic for today is writing a blog.
Have you always dreamed of being a blogger?
Good Decision
Although I am anonymous here, I have been writing a blog about medicine for years. In fact, back in 2006, I started an online art business. My brother, the resident tech guru in the family, told me that if I wanted my website to rank highly, I needed to have frequently changing content. So I attached a blog to the domain and started to write about art.
Boring!
My posts were uninspired. The topics blatantly salesy. My passion for writing a blog waning, I searched google on a whim to find medical oriented topics. I stumbled upon a blog by a guy named GruntDoc.
And my world was transformed. Ten years later, I will share just a few of the benefits I have enjoyed from writing a blog:
- Two books written
- Published countless articles in magazines and on other websites
- Paid to write for a medical website
- Invited and paid to give talks in exotic places like Dublin, Ireland (Become a subscriber and you will receive a video link to this talk about empathy and medicine from 2013)
- Met online and in real life countless luminaries, thought leaders, and downright nice people
I have nothing bad to say about writing a blog! Well almost nothing.
Bad Decision
I pretty much made every mistake a person can make in writing my first blog.
- Paid little attention to appearance
- Used a free blogging platform
- Never added images to my posts
- My proof reading was atrocious
- Had no idea what an email list was
- Included no internal links
The list goes on and on. But above all those, the biggest mistake was that I treated my blog as a soliloquy. I envisioned my writing as an online diary put out for the world to see.
*These are the thoughts and feelings of a primary care doctor. *
I left no room for two-way discussions. Often people thoughtfully wrote comments, and I remained silent. I neither acknowledged nor responded to what my readers had to say.
Not only did this not build readership, it spurned developing deeper connections with my community. This is by far the biggest regret surrounding my old blog.
Hopefully, with DiverseFI, I have learned how to be better!
In Summary
Writing a blog has been a life changing exercise in humility, community, and learning. Without making the decision to put words to paper, I would have missed out on all sorts of opportunities and even paid consulting.
My advice to you, if you have interest in writing a blog, is to take the plunge!
Fame? Fortune? Advancing your ideology?
Maybe.
Making friends?
Definitely
*If you write a blog, What benefits have you derived? *
*If you have interest in learning about the blog I wrote about medicine please say so in the comments section or subscribe to this blog, and you will get an opportunity to watch my Ted-Style talk on medicine and social media. *