What Blogging Has Done For Me

I first started blogging in March 2008 and since 2009, I’ve been posting a new Bo’s Café Life strip on my blog six days a week. Some days it’s difficult to sit down and think of something to post. Some days, I ask myself, Why am I still doing this? I had one of those days recently so I decided to write a list, a list to read when I need to remember why I blog.

• Blogging helped me to find my voice. By letting me get immediate feedback on my work, blogging helped me to find my voice as a humorist. And today, I still rely on commentors to let me know when my humor works—and when it doesn’t. 
• Blogging enables me to share my writings with others.  Four years ago, I was anti-blogging. I only wanted to get published in the “respected” print publications. That was until both The Atlantic and The Village Voice rejected a humorous—but controversial—piece I wrote about Starbucks. I believed in the piece and I knew that there was an audience for it… so I emailed the blog editor at The Huffington Post and he said I could post it and other pieces. That was when I became a blogger. And later, when I couldn’t find a publication that was willing to publish my humorous pieces about marketing, I was able to post those pieces on Chief Marketer’s Big Fat Marketing Blog. Today, I still post pieces that have been rejected by publishers. Without blogging, those pieces would have died on my laptop.
• Blogging gives me a reason to write when I feel like giving up. Every time I feel like giving up I’ll get an encouraging comment from a reader, a reader who says that my comic strip made her day. When I feel like quitting, I remind myself that there are people who visit my site every single day and hope to find something funny to read. I don’t want to let them down.
• Blogging enables me to make new friends around the country and around the world. When I visited Colonial Williamsburg, I had coffee with a writer I met through my blog. And when I visited West Virginia, I attended the local writers group meeting; I met some of the members through my blog. It’s a great feeling to know that from Indiana to Istanbul, I have friends who will meet me in a café and talk to me about writing over a cup of coffee.  

I hope this list helps you the way it has helped me. And if I missed something, please share it with me.

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“Liking” My Blog to Get Me to “Like” Your Blog and Other Things That Irk Me

I’ve recently noticed more bloggers “liking” my Bo’s Café Life blog and, when I visit some of their blogs, I can’t see why the blogger “liked” my post. My ego wants to think that the blogger somehow came across my site, found the post for that day funny, and hit the “like” icon. That’s what my ego wants to think. My brain tells me something else.

I suspect that some bloggers are “liking” my posts just so that I can follow their links, “like” their posts,  and possibly follow them. I understand that this is a way to build followers—I get it. My issue is this: As a blogger, I need a way to truly assess how many people like my cartoons and I can’t do this if a person is liking my blog as a part of her marketing strategy. Know what I mean?

I have pockets of daily readers (people who truly appreciate Bo’s Cafe Life) in countries such as Turkey (you know who you are!), Macedonia, Australia, England, China, Japan, Canada, and, of course, the U.S. and I”ll take them over 10,000 fake followers any day. One more thing…

I don’t understand why a blogger even wants a bunch of fake followers. I guess bloggers who want fake followers need the ego boost. Bo’s Café Life doesn’t have many people who “follow” it. Why? Because the people who truly follow and appreciate Bo’s Café Life know that I post a new strip six days a week and that I’ve been doing this for over two years! They don’t need to “follow” me; they know that if they visit my blog, they’ll see a new comic!  So, what’s my point?

Don’t like my blog if you don’t really like my blog.