Blogging ... Why Do It? | Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Blogging huh?

Who knew when they started, how much this blogging malarky would take over their life?

Who knew blogging could devour so much time and so much emotional energy? Who knew that blogging ups and downs would define our day? Who knew that blogging would become so important to us that we would define ourselves as "bloggers"?

Don't get me wrong, I love it!

But, I do think we have to be careful how much time we spend on blogging and how we spend that time, as most of us will not make that much direct money out of blogging but can very easily sacrifice a great deal of family time to it.

At the moment I am trying to set myself some blogging targets and to prioritise what I do on the blog. To do that I have had to work out how much time I can justify spending on blogging.

And to do that I have had to take one step further back and ask myself the $10 million question of "Why on earth do I blog?" ... It's been a really interesting exercise and I've found it incredibly helpful. I can't recommend it enough.

I just brainstormed all my motivations for blogging. And put them in order of importance.

So many of them are so contradictory.

But seeing them all there and forcing myself to decide which were most important really helped me see that I spend an awful lot of time doing things on my blog that don't contribute to the most important goals.

And that there are goals that are really important to me that I haven't really invested time in.

And it got me wondering whether there were completely different ways that I hadn't tried before that might better help me achieve my most important goals.

In a nutshell, that gave me a list of what I need to:

STOP doing
Do MORE of
Get creative about & do BETTER

Next week I am going to be sharing some more tips that have really helped me plan my blogging time and be much more productive, but in the meantime this is a list of lots of possible blogging goals that I came up with, with a couple of my blogging friends and that you might find helpful in identifying your own goals ..

Do you recognise your goals on this list? Or would you add others? Which are most important to you? Are some of yours contradictory? What's your answer to the $10 million question "Why do I blog?" ... do share your thoughts ...

Blogging Goals

Share family life with friends
Keep a journal of family's life and personal thoughts
Keep a record of children's childhood
Have an outlet for writing
Exchange ideas in areas of interest
Exchange tips on how to survive motherhood etc
Meet new people with similar interests
Make new friends
Share experiences in hope they can help others
Get support from people facing similar challenges
Get free stuff for the family
Make enough money from blogging to provide extras for the family
Make enough money from blogging so can stay at home with kids
Make a living from blogging
Learn new skills that can help future career e.g. social media
Learn new skills that can make money out of e.g. building websites
Learn new skills so can work from home
Build contacts who might help me get a new job
Create a show case for e.g. writing, photography, editing, social media skills
Build relationships with brands that might be useful for career
Build relationships with publishers that might be useful for career
Create a marketing channel for other products e.g. on Etsy
Create a marketing channel for family business / new business
Establish an audience for a book I want to publish

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If you looking for more great blogging tips check out my Grow Your Blog and Mommy Hack series and follow my blogging board on Pinterest ...

And for more great blog planning posts from other bloggers check out the posts below ... and feel free to add your own ...