Some months ago I wrote an article here based off a question one of my friends asked me. He asked me “what are you getting out of making videos?” I responded “I like it.” Actually he never heard or saw that response, as I did a video first, then wrote the post.
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In the last few weeks I’ve started thinking about this in a different way after having a Hangout conversation with my friend Joanne DelBalso. We were talking about business in general and she asked me what my intention was for blogging. She further explained she wanted to know what my purpose was, or what I was hoping to get out of it. Finally, she wanted to know if I had expressed that purpose anywhere, if I even knew what it was.
Of course I’ve known since late 2008 what I wanted the purpose of this blog to be. Okay, it has many purposes, but the main purpose is to get organizations to request me to come speak to them, and get paid for it. My long term ambition is to be a professional speaker and presenter. At this point I’ve spoken in 8 states but I haven’t given a presentation outside of my own area in 4 years now.
I had to think about it a bit to see if, at least on this blog, I had indicated that anywhere. I looked at my About page and realized that I had linked to a bio on my business page but never mentioned speaking. I looked at my contact page but there’s nothing on that page about it. It seems the last time I even mentioned it on this blog was on June 16th, 2010, on a post talking about social media strategies. Wow!
You can imagine how disconcerting that was to discover. How is anyone supposed to know what my intention, purpose and reason is for writing this blog if I don’t mention it anywhere? Heck, I didn’t even mention it on my focus post at the beginning of the year, nor put it into the video I recorded about the same subject; Oy!
All of us hate selling so much… at least directly. We also have this thing in our heads where we believe that self promotion is a bad thing. I’ve worked hard on breaking both of these because I’m self employed, and if I don’t promote or market I won’t get business, will starve, my wife will leave me and the dog won’t come home (I don’t have a dog; see? lol) and I’ll be forced to get a grocery cart to push my stuff in and eat in shelters because I won’t have enough money to put gas in my car (which is paid off; whew!) to stay warm.
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By the time you read this I’ll have fixed that About page and added a little something to my contact page, but now it’s time to ask all of you if you’ve stated the reasons for your blogs somewhere? I’ll pick on my buddies Brian Hawkins, Adrienne Smith and Peter Pellicca, aka Sire for a quick moment. 🙂
A true intention for all of them is to make money in some way. Brian kind of hides it in the middle of a very long paragraph on his About page, but it’s there. Peter talks about it early on, saying that once he learned he could make money blogging and had passion for writing he was hooked. Adrienne doesn’t specifically say she blogs to make money, but she does mention her intention well by telling us she makes money via affiliate marketing and consulting others on how to create a presence online.
It behooves all of us to have a stated intention, especially if you’re kind of like me and you’re not writing a niche blog. Even with a niche blog, you should want your visitors to know whether you’re talking about something because you like it or because you’re hoping it works out in bringing you business in some fashion, whether through consulting or selling products or getting hired to do some work for them.
And… well… I guess you should mention it more than once every 3 1/2 years. 😉
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