I started this blog 18-years ago, have written 3300+ posts which have been viewed over a million times. In the initial years, it was a public diary (like most other blogs of those days), kind of my notes out in the open. Soon, I realised as I penned each post, I was forced to research on the subject (I take care to be as accurate as possible) which meant my understanding of the subject became better and in turn, it decluttered my thoughts. Personally, for me, the hour or so each day I spend on writing the blog had a destressing effect on me – that’s was the biggest motivation on why I have persisted in this non-commercial venture.
Today the space once occupied only by blogs has been replaced first by Twitter & Facebook, now by YouTube, TikTok (its clones in India) and Podcasts. Add to them are ephemeral places like Clubhouse. While each of these platforms has its attraction, I see blogs to be unique. I self-host (run my own server in a virtual machine) my blog running WordPress. Even, if you are writing your blog on a public SaaS platform like Substack or Medium, most of them allow the writings you generated to be exported any time. Basically, you own your content and you decide what happens with it. Blogs also get indexed better by Google & Bing better than other media and are easily discoverable.
Over the years, I have been approached on the subject of – Why do I blog? What to blog? How to blog? What to write and what not to write and so on.
A few weeks ago, my college’s alumni association invited me for their monthly talk and the topic was “The Art and Engineering of Blogging”. The audience were mid-level to senior-level executives and business owners and they were curious on this ‘old’ technology called blogging. In the talk I presented the reasons why blogs are still relevant, and why they are a useful tool. As for me, as I have said above, I write for my satisfaction, and I find it to be a destressing mechanism. The Q & A session that followed the talk was engaging and I enjoyed answering the questions. My thanks to Ms Sowmya Mahadevan for organizing the session. Listen to the recording above and share your comments or tweet your thoughts to @venkatarangan.
A talk on Why to blog? How to blog? What to write and what not to write? for SVCE Alumni Association
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