As most moms know, it's nice to have a hobby, for most of us it will be the
blog itself. Blogging lends itself to a whole host of therapeutic uses, it can
be a place to complain, a place to share and a often much needed dose of
escapism, while dipping your toes into the lives of others. I do enjoy
blogging, like most starter bloggers my audience is probably here by accident,
but that's the best bit, you have no idea who is reading about your life,
looking at pictures of your family, judging your opinions and poor writing
skills (like mine).
If you take some time out, and really look at some of the blogs
around, I'm mainly looking at parent bloggers here, there are a vast array of
amazing. When you skip back to your own page, you will be a little deflated at
the lack of zazz your own page has.
This is when it happens, you start to really play around with your blog, new
backgrounds, different templates, posting more photos, diversifying your posts.
Buttons, Binkies, Affiliations, Blogrolls, galleries... The list of extras is
very, very exhaustive. But what makes the other blogs around us so interesting
is the writer behind it all, the key-pusher.
Those who sit devoted to their audience, because they know who their
audience is, who share personal stories, inspiring stories, heartfelt stories,
heart breaking tales and most of all honest ones. Sharing very personal parts
of the life they lead. It's interesting, it's almost bordering on voyeurism in its
most updated terms, it might not be sexual but it is certainly things of a
private nature.
We sit down, with our tea/coffee/choice of beverage, ready to devour every
word they have written, from there many people comment, this goes to and fro
for a while, and eventually they become friends. It's so easy because you
already feel like you know each other due to reading almost daily updates about
each other, the people around us and our interests. As a parent blogger, as
well as outside circles it’s nice to have a online support network of people
who are in the same position as you. This takes the blogging into a whole new
stratosphere of importance in our lives. Sitting at home, with your glorious
spawn trying to carve out time in the day to blog, to connect with the online
world, the ones we forged for ourselves. In some cases, even our alter-egos.
There are many parent and baby groups around, but the times might not suit everyone,
then what? The easy answer is trying to connect yourself with online groups.
Connecting with millions has never been as easy as it is now. Are those relationships
lasting? Quite often they are, because there is a connection with people like us,
it is easier to nurture a relationship via online media platforms than it is to
manage to meet up with real people when you have a busy daily life.
What starts out as a hobby, something to have a go at, can become our main
source of interaction, along with your blog; it makes sense to create a twitter
account & possibly a facebook, where you can throw your words out into the
world and hope they bounce back somewhere along the way.
Create your own personal network, a collection, a support group of the like
minded.
There is a lot more to blogging than it being a hobby. It's connecting, it's
a catalogue of your life, it’s a platform for controversy and it’s free
therapy.
The power of the blogger is also now pretty obvious to companies. They give
bloggers the opportunity to test out products, to voice their opinion that will
serve as a guide to perspective buyers. We get to keep the products in exchange
for taking a time out during our days to write about them. Top bloggers, with a
vast amount of readers are in a position to decline a review if they don’t
think it will fit with their personal style.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the keyboard is mightier than
the overpriced advertising agency.
The blog is now an insight into our lives in a way that perhaps is even more
personal than meeting for coffee. Pictures, writing styles, personal traumas,
due dates, scan pictures, what you are reading, birth videos, what you are
wearing, where you political views lie, what you spend, what you save and how
you feel is now encapsulated in a virtual world for all to see. We choose as
bloggers to allow people into our worlds, who we deem suitable to connect with
outside of blog comments and follows, we choose our own hours, our content and
our backgrounds.
We choose to let you in, you choose to stay.
