7 Benefits of Blogging

New technologies have provided a large number of opportunities for those who want to write and publish. Many writers agree that blogging opened up an amazingly useful online platform. For others, blogging is seen as a “must” or “should.” But most agree that blogging is a great tool to use if you want to share your written work with people around the world.

Whether you blog for fun or as a hobby, visibility or business, book promotion or platform building, or selfexpression or to write your book, a blog offers a variety of benefits. Let’s explore a few of them.

1. A New Challenge and Experience

Challenging yourself is important. It motivates you to move forward and to grow as a writer. Blogging is a challenge for writers who feel afraid of  public opinion but want to conquer this problem by communicating their thoughts to the masses. It can also feel like a stretch for those who are not technologically savvy.

Others have problems with consistency, and this is one of the things  blogging demands. Blogging once per month simply won’t get your work noticed as well as blogging once every couple of days. For those who feel they don’t have the time to blog often or to stick to a regular blogging schedule, blogging frequently feels hard.

2. A Way to Improve Your Writing

From the moment you start blogging, you set out to become a better writer. With every post you write and publish, you will see how your writing style, vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar improve. Many bloggers look at their first posts, created years ago, and feel like someone else used to write them.

Blogging helps your writing style evolve, which makes you more able to tackle  a variety of other jobs writing in the future.

3. A Way to Shape Your Mindset and Identity

Creating unique content and sharing your views with the world helps you learn who you really are as a person and a writer. You start thinking differently from the moment you start blogging.

First, you will think about the world differently. If you explore your niche and the other bloggers writing in it, you see the world through their eyes as well as your own. Also, when you receive comments from readers around the world, your view of our work and it’s impact expands. You understand the universality of issues about which you write.

After a while, you will think about yourself differently. You realize that you can impact your readers. You’ll see that your opinion matters to others.

And you’ll develop an authentic voice as well as a strong purpose as a writer. In fact, you’ll also see yourself as a writer.

Additionally, staying in contact with bloggers, readers, and those in your social networks—and understanding their opinions on the subject matter about which you write—will affect the way you think and make you more open-minded. As time passes, you will perceive and experience things around you differently in general.

4. A way to Help and Inspire Others

The main reason many writers start blogging is to take a chance on sharing their work with others. Regardless of the topic of your blog, publishing your work online puts you in a position to help people. Many writers and bloggers remain unaware of this fact, especially in the early blogging stages when they have few readers. There will come a time when some of the regular followers contact you to express how much your content affecting their lives in a positive way.

Such moments push you forward to continue working on your blog and sharing your work. The feeling that you are an inspiration to someone and that you are helping others will keep you motivated.

5. A Way to Become an Expert

For a nonfiction writer or a fiction writer, one of the most important benefits of blogging is the fact that you become an expert on a topic. No matter what the topic of your blog, the more you write about it, the more knowledge you acquire in that particular field.

Over time, even if you didn’t start as an expert, you become an expert. Your authority will open many doors for you. A company might contact you to work or write for them or a literary agent or publisher might reach out to ask you if you would be willing to write a book on your area of expertise.

6. A Way to Enlarge Your Social Network

Writers need large social networks because they help them promote and sell their work. As you share your blog posts, you develop a bigger social network, which will come in handy for gaining more work, landing media gigs, or connecting with other experts.

The online world is a great place to meet new friends with whom you can share experiences and work. You also can meet colleagues, and you can support each other. The more people with whom you are connected online, the more people who will hear about your work.

A large social network can be fun, effective, and profitable.

7. A Way to Earn Income

The most successful bloggers around the world may not have thought about money when they started their blogs. They  focused their attention on expressing their opinion about the world or a topic. They shared their knowledge and experience because they felt passionate about doing so. Eventually, this caused a high number of visitors to flock to their blog.

Their large readership opened the door to earning an income from their blogs. You could see it as a reward for all the time they spent creating a blog.

However, some people set out to become professional bloggers. These are bloggers who earn a living from their blogs. They might do so by selling products, services or books.

So if you are thinking about starting a blog, simply keep the fact that you can make money in the back of your mind, as this should not be your main motivator.

If you’ve been considering blogging, these benefits should give you reason enough to begin.

About the Author

Anja Skrba is a content blogger and community manager at FirstSiteGuide. She’s been blogging for over five years.

Photo courtesy of faithie / 123RF Stock Photo