Would you read your own blog?

What a powerful question. Darren Rowse of ProBlogger wrote a guest post at ScribeFire on this question and I think it’s a great one. So often those of us who blog get caught up in the mechanics of SEO or the discipline of linking to and commenting on others blogs that we forget about the most fundamental aspect of all of this – no one will read your blog if it isn’t interesting and if it isn’t even interesting to you then it won’t be to anyone else.

As Darren says this is an important question for a couple of reasons:

• Sustainability – building a successful blogs takes a
  concerted effort over the long haul. It takes years to grow a blog up
  to the potential that it has and if you don’t have an interest in the
  topic or are writing in a style that isn’t reflective of who you are it
  can be difficult to sustain a blog for longer than a few months.
• Readers catch passion
  - blog readers are a fairly intuitive bunch and if you’re heart isn’t
  in your blog then you’re unlikely to write in a way that engages them
  in a way that will convert them to loyal readers. Someone recently told
  me that they read ProBlogger because they could tell that I loved my
  topic. I think that says it all.
• Reality is Important -
  as I look at the posts that generate the most traffic for my blogs it
  strikes me that they are usually around the problems that I have had
  and how I’ve overcome – the posts emerge out of my real life. One of
  the main reasons that people use the web is to search for ways to
  overcome problems or fulfill needs that they have. To find how someone
  else has fixed an issue that you have is something that people will
  reward with loyalty (and some free word of mouth marketing).

Great stuff Darren. I know I’m looking forward to more posts in this series.