Serious Blogging

| 27-10-2008 | Blogging | Written by Matthew Bennett | 2 comments

You’re a blogger, a conversation and thought leader, a top-tier netocrat. A fifth of our world’s 6.6 billion person population can’t even read and write whilst another fifth of us actively use the internet.

Serious Blogging

More than three-quarters of internet users read blogs but only a small percentage of the human population writes a regular blog that is read by even a few people.

The financial crisis threatens the very pillars that Western democracies are based on, global warming threatens to shut off the oceanic currents that make climate work and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grand Mufti of Egypt have warned of a serious conflict between Christianity and Islam if we don’t do something to change our collective ways.

And you want to write another post about the iPhone or ‘10 ways to get on the front page of Digg‘?

Serious Blogging Twitter Responses

This question was one of the most responded tweets I’ve ever written, so first of all here are some of the responses.

@Charonqc Define ’serious’…. personally I feel that we have no responsibility to do so – it is a matter of choice.

@barbaraling No, bloggers should talk about whatever they’re passionate. That’s what helps create the unique blogging voice

@lisibo I guess it depends on the purpose of your blog! Think I keep a balance between ‘cosas que me chiflan’ and serious stuff

@wdfavour Yes. Bloggers should be responsible and talk about things that add value to the lives of others.

@vipvirtualsols Blogging is about expressing yourself freely, so yes why not? Up to the individual though

@sylva213 as much as non-bloggers, I guess-)) what do you think? and “dobré ráno” (good morning)!

@contrapuntist Depends on the blog and the kind of serious life stuff. I write about music blog, so I try to relate serious stuff

@Studebaker Always took blogs as diaries reflecting whatever drives each writer’s Heart.. Never thought in terms of “serious” or not..

@greenfee Who decides what is serious? Seems there are always self appointed people dictating what others should do.

Now here’s a bit more about what I think and what I meant with the question.

Defining Serious

Plenty of people write about ’serious’ topics already – blogging, social media, law, medicine, languages, etc – so I need to try and explain further what I mean by ’serious’.

I mean wider issues that affect us all as human beings in all of the different kinds of societies, religions and cultures we live in. In fact, your society, religion and culture make great starting points for more serious blogging.

I mean the big moral or political issues that never seem to have a right answer or where the right answer always seems to depend on which culture, religion or society you belong to: abortion, education, war, the financial crisis, global warming and all the rest.

I mean more serious personal topics – relationships, love, families, money, children, work, learning, emotions – which also depend on who you are, where you’re from and what you believe in.

Are you an expert on any of these topics? Probably not, but you are almost certainly a reasonably (or formidably) well educated human being who has the capacity to interpret his or her world, connect with others and lead a conversation about it via your blog.

My Blog is Not Responsible, It’s Free!

‘Blogging is about freedom of expression, free style writing, I’ll bloody well write what I like, no-one’s going to tell me what to write on my blog.’

Well, clearly not.

I don’t mean responsibility in the sense of a blog police or some outside obligation, which would be quite ridiculous.

No-one is forced to blog. The free, independent writing spirit is, after all, one of the most enticing elements of blogging.

I mean responsibility in the sense of seeing something more serious in the world (thousands of topics to choose from) and responding to it, both as a blogger – as someone who knows how to write a blogpost, connect with others and lead a global conversation – and as a human being – not just as ‘the Adsense guy‘, ‘the social media expert‘ or ‘the knitting woman‘, worthy as those niches are.

After all, what you’ve seen or read about or the thought you just had might also have implications for your readers’ worlds, so get a post out and lead and participate in that conversation too.

Passionate Niches

Blogging is all about niches and passion and finding your voice. Very true, it seems, but this shouldn’t stop us from thinking of how to mix it up.

Would all of Problogger’s readers suddenly abandon ship if he threw out the odd post about global warming? I doubt it; I imagine they’d probably chip in with their opinions in the same way as they do on the blogging topics.

And what if he did posts like ‘blogging to stop global warming‘ or ‘the problems of blogging from Iraq’?

Maybe you could do it like social-media guru Chris Brogan and his Dad-o-Matic project or like @marketingprofs Ann Handley participating on the This Mommy Gig blog.

As for passion: are you not passionate about, do you not have an opinion about, your life, your children, your family, your friends and what you believe in?

There are plenty of people doing serious blogging already. I suggest that all bloggers should post about more serious stuff, if they feel like it; not because someone tells them too and not because they feel they have to but because they can.