I listened with interest to the most recent episode of Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster’s Marketing Companion Podcast (an excellent addition to your lineup if you listen to marketing podcasts) in a discussion about authorship and who we write for. A commercial, corporate blog doubtlessly has done its homework and designed personas for who the corporation writes for. I know we do this on the work blog I co-write for SHIFT Communications. This isn’t a corporate blog, though.

But who is this blog written for? The short answer: me. I write down things here that I want to remember, write down little words and phrases that I want to save for the purposes of recalling later. I write ideas down that I eventually want to incorporate into talks and presentations. Yes, I could do this in Evernote (and that’s where many blog posts start) but you can’t Google your Evernote notebook. I can Google my site for the vague hint of an idea I wrote down a few years ago and find it more easily.

I blog here daily not for search traffic, not for a keyword list I need to hit, but because it keeps me sharp. My writing skills don’t rust. Blogging is like a mental workout every day. Can I come up with something new? Can I synthesize data into something coherent? Can I figure out what an announcement from a respected company or person means for me as a marketer? If you want to blog successfully for a long period of time, you have to write for yourself first and foremost.

I see selfies on Facebook of friends post-workout every day. This blog is my mental workout selfie, but the difference is that hopefully, you get a little stronger, too.

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