Blogging

This past month I replaced a line of Hi-Fi speakers I've listened to and enjoyed for the past 20 years with a pair of new floor speakers from Klipsch. It's an acknowledgment that my hearing and tastes have changed and it's time to listen to my music through a new stereo system. This recognition of needing to do things differently has become a common theme for me lately. I'm finding the old ways aren't working and perhaps joy can be found again by doing something new. With this theme on change, instead of blogging only when I'm inspired by great ideas or events, I decided to blog every few days as I take part in the 100 Days to Offload challenge.

Within the last few weeks since its debut, Threads has taken the digital world by storm. A product of Meta — Facebook’s parent company — Threads has been widely discussed as a contender designed to rival Twitter. The buzz surrounding its launch and the rapid adoption rates are impossible to ignore.

Yet, with every new platform comes a crucial question for businesses — should you jump on the Threads bandwagon? Is it genuinely worth taking advantage of another social media channel, especially when it is in its infancy?

I've been struggling as of late trying to find the time to write articles for my blog and websites. It's actually caused me some stress to not be writing because there is so much I want to say and share. I always feel that I'm so behind in my writing. This has been an ongoing theme for me but it's not because I don't have the time but instead because I have chosen higher priorities with my time than blogging.

Did you know that there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet?

Staggering numbers, right? 

Most brands want to have a company blog, but they may worry over the cost of hiring writers and editors and driving traffic to the site without knowing what the return on investment (ROI) of blogging might be.

According to Blogometer, around 7.7 million blog posts are written every day. Of course, the number of posts varies, but you're competing against a ton of other information to even see an ROI. Your articles must stand out from any competitor articles, but also compete against the many distractions on the internet to keep user attention.

Blogging has always been a way for me to express myself creatively as I hide away in my home office for "me time". Unfortunately, the COVID-19 Pandemic changed all that with my day job requiring maximum telework which in turn transformed my creative personal space into a remote office that work owned eight hours a day. For my mental and physical health, once those work hours are up I have made the conscious decision to walk away from the computer. I now find it more necessary to find something else to do that doesn't involve screen time. This shift in priorities unfortunately reduced my writing time.

Life has a way of distracting us from our goals. Four years ago when I decided to retire CMS Report, I did so in the hope for opportunity to find a new voice in my online presence. It didn't work out so well. Instead of being more creative in my writings, I spent more time maintaining the nuts and bolts to my websites and publishing other people's articles than I did expressing my own thoughts and ideas. I know for many of you, you find yourself in a similar predicament.

During the summer months the quantity of articles I write and publish are often minimal. I enjoy my summer activities of bicycling, motorcycling, camping, and other family activities too much to sit in front of a computer all summer long. Not being much of a winter outdoorsman and living in South Dakota, the winter months have always been my time for focusing on my personal blog as well as writing some articles for socPub.

Running a blog can be a dream for those that have a passion for writing. Especially when your blog is about a topic or topics that you love. There are definitely some things you want to avoid when running a blog and we’re going to point out five of the most important. Ensuring you don’t do these things will help to ensure you have a successful blog running.

I'm a big believer that it is the small positive things we do in our day that have the biggest impact on our own well being. From here through the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, I've decided to just blog about the small things I'm doing to escape from the anxiety producing headlines in our news. I recognize that not everything I'm writing is of interest to others, so while some of my work will continue to be posted at socPub, all of my work can be viewed on my personal blog, bryanruby.com.