Should You Kill Off Your Blog?!
From time to time I read an article with a theme along these lines: Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are taking over the internet making emailing and blogging a thing of the past.
Though such ideas are out there, I have yet to uncover hard data supporting these kinds of statements. But I can imagine that there may actually be something to this sort of thinking especially since Facebook now has more than 400 million registered users and my email inbox seems to be under control. Concerning the latter I can say that the number of messages I receive daily has finally plateaued, this coming after many years of relentless growth.
I’m registered with all of the major social networking sites as well as with a handful of relatively unknown sites too. But if you think that I’m going to become a Facebook Farmville devotee and give up my blogging, you’re cluck crazy!
So should you give up blogging? Well, if your blog isn’t much to speak of then go ahead.
For the majority of people who have been maintaining blogs for several years, giving up blogging now seems to make no sense. Especially if you have created a regular following and have steady traffic. Of course, should you decide to do something completely different with your life, then exiting blogging makes sense. But don’t leave your blog twisting in the wind if you think that Facebook should replace your time online.
Here are some reasons why I am not about to give up blogging any time soon:
I enjoy creating my own work. Blogging gives me a platform or bully pulpit to say what I think. Certainly you can do that on many social networking sites, but you are competing in a noisy marketplace of ideas. By maintaining this blog I can control it and give people the chance to respond and be heard.
I don’t want to lose money. This blog certainly is not a money maker but I do manage other blogs that are. Losing a couple daily Adsense clicks may not be much, but that tends to add up. Why should social networking sites get the benefit of that and more especially when I am providing to them unique and (hopefully) interesting content?
For posterity’s sake. I can’t imagine my blog writings being around long after I am gone, but if they are then I want to receive credit for what I wrote. Even for the short term I need to point my potential clients to my writings; without a blog as reference then I have one less resource to show.
I know some people are interpreting the writing on the wall to mean that blogging will eventually go the way of newspapers. Well, newspapers aren’t dead yet and just like print media I believe that blogging will transform to keep pace with “what’s new” while still allowing bloggers to have a voice on a platform they control.

