Here’s a little exercise that I do periodically to help me keep my blog on track.
It’s based upon a typical life coaching-type exercise where you’re asked to visualize your own funeral and write your own eulogy—to think about what you want to be known for after you’re gone. But in this exercise we’re going to do it with your blog.
What do you want your blog to be known for?
I remember doing this exercise on for my first photography blog (now no longer active) six years ago. At the time, that blog was simply aggregating camera reviews from around the Web for readers. It was reasonably successful (it made enough to make me a full-time blogger) but something didn’t feel right about it to me.
So I began to ask myself, “What do I want my blog to be known for?”
I projected ten years forward and began to visualize what kind of photography blog I could have at that point. I made a list (or rather something of a vision/manifesto for the blog)—one that I came across yesterday.
The list was pretty long (quite a few pages) but included the following points:
- a place where new cameras came to unlock the secrets of their cameras
- a place where people came to share their images
- a place where readers would encourage one another in their photography
- a place where readers would share their tips with one another
- a place which people see as being original in its thinking
- a place that was renowned for its advice to all levels of photographers.
There was a heap more points like these—but you get the idea.
At the end of my vision document I also wrote the following observation:
“What I am dreaming of is nothing like what I am currently doing.”
My realization was that my dream looked nothing like the current reality. I had a blog at the time that was largely aggregating and rearranging...
