Oxthink

If you don’t have an audience or following, are you a writer? If nobody can see you, do you exist? Schrodinger’s Blogger, no less.

I regularly post my blogs with little reception, no swathe of expectant fans, and no sense of reaching out to others. I am an Unknown Blogger.

It would be great to have more people reading and following my blog. But that’s just not happened for me.

So why do I do it? Why do I continue to publish articles on here without striving to increase my readership?

That’s actually two questions: why do I write when very few people will read what I put? And secondly, why don’t I do more to encourage people to discover my writings?

In answer to the first question, there are two reasons why I write. Firstly, it’s because I enjoy the creative process. I get great satisfaction from presenting ideas and formulating sentences. It gives me the ability to produce something out of nothing. As an architect designs and constructs skyscrapers, I build a blog.

And secondly, I write because I feel what I have to say is relevant and interesting. And that gives it value. It’s both a labour of love and a sense of duty. It gives me a feeling of purpose, that I am leaving my mark on the world, that I am contributing something.

It doesn’t particularly concern me that my readership hasn’t taken off. My ideas, my writings, my blog may just be ahead of their time.

One day, I hope that my writings will be appreciated for their insight, wisdom, and quality. Like many great writers and artists, it may be that fame and acclaim may come about only after my death.

My blog may be my enduring legacy.

And of course, if you persist in what you do, you are more likely to succeed. The more I write, the more likely it is that something I write will have some relevance, importance, or impact. I don’t quite compare myself with the typing monkey who, if he types for long enough, will reproduce the works of Shakespeare. But there is some validity to the notion that the more mud that’s thrown, the more likely it is that some will stick.

The beauty of publishing as a blog is that other forms of publishing – even in a newspaper or magazine – are nigh on impossible for an unknown writer. Blogging is an accessible way to document my thoughts and ideas.

It satisfies my needs:

• Something that can reach a mass audience.
• Something that will last for a long time.
• Something that doesn’t cost me much.
• Something that I can regularly update and add to.

I therefore write for myself and for posterity.

In answer to the second question regarding why I don’t promote my blog more, I suppose it is a confidence and belief thing. Having never had any success, you do wonder if there might be a reason for that. For the Unknown Blogger, there is always that lingering doubt that the blog might not actually be very good.

I might like it, but I’m hardly an impartial reader.

Besides, I have tended to abstain from marketing my blog because I’m just not the pushy sort. It’s out there if people want to find it, but I’m not going to foist it on people. The trouble with that attitude is that, with so much out there, people do need help finding things.

For too long, I have waited for Lady Luck, hoping that one day I will just look at my viewing stats and see a massive spike. To be discovered at last.

It’s a Blogger’s dream: to be seen, to be shared, to soar.

The reality is that this hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to. If you want it to happen, then you have to make it happen. Things rarely come to you; you have to go out and get them.

Maybe now’s the time for the great relaunching. Maybe now’s the time to start marketing myself. Maybe now’s the time to come out of the study and introduce the world to me and my blog.