Insert clever blog title here

Are you on an intensely individual journey toward the meaning of life? If so, you should probably blog about it.

Most likely, it will turn out like all the other personal blogs written by pretentious 20-year-olds. You might say something about beginning a journey of a thousand miles with a single step toward making the change you want to see in the world on the first day of the rest of your life.

Or maybe you’d take a more cynical approach. Perhaps you’d use your vast life experience to comment on the absurdity of all modes of thought and reason contrary to your own.

Or maybe you’d just post YouTube videos. Who knows?

No doubt the words “journey,” “movement” or “discovery” would appear in your blog’s title. And you’d probably put a picture of a sunset in the header – just to give it some extra validity. A nice blurb in the “About You” box could tell your readers that your favorite color is purple and that you like math.

But in the end, who really cares?

I guess it’s understandable that you’d want to write. You’re a smart university student with a bright future. Highly educated and ready to share your wisdom, you fit the mold of the average blog author.

Indeed, 75 percent of all bloggers have a college degree. After years of parading your thoughts in front of eccentric professors, it could be tough to stop writing about obscure personal points of interest that few others outside of your close circle of contacts care about. 

With more than 133 million blogs in existence, there’s plenty of room for your thoughts on the World Wide Web. However, it’s questionable whether anyone will read them. 

In 2007, Google CEO Eric Schmidt remarked that the average blog has one reader: its writer. And though blogs have gained increasing popularity and validity, recent research suggests that the average reader spends 96 seconds reading a blog post.

For all the hours you’ll spend perfecting that poem about crying in the rain, you’ll only get a minute and a half of attention (sorry, emo bloggers). The fact is, if someone happens to stumble his way to your little corner of the blogosphere, he probably won’t stay for long.

But maybe you’re not in it for the fame. Perhaps you write for fulfillment or self-satisfaction. In that case, you’re not alone. In its annual “State of the Blogosphere” report, Technorati (a blog about blogs) claimed that 70 percent of bloggers measure their success by the internal joy they receive in publishing. And that’s something we can all understand.

Sometimes, it’s just nice to feel like someone cares about what you have to say.

So when your first post is finished, make sure you copy and paste that url into your Facebook status. I wouldn’t want to miss your work. And don’t forget to tweet about your new post either. That won’t make you look desperate at all.


E-mail: tycherne@indiana.edu