A blog is a personal diary in disguise

People write a blog for various reasons – as an outlet, to share particular moments of their life, or their learnings, or to even curate things – all under the umbrella of providing value (mostly) to those who will eventually read it.

But, when you read them, it ends up with things you actually wanted to tell yourself.

Hardly anyone would agree to that though.

“I’m a learned person and I’m here to share those learnings” “I know this and that and would like to make people aware of those things”

Sure! But all these observations and learnings root from somewhere and usually, they are from your own life. When you look back, when you introspect, when you observe, when you learn more and implement it to your own life – all of those things root from your own life.

Considering that, more often than not, there are also thoughts that are difficult to deal with, regarding one’s own life and those are the times when these writings and posts take the form to let those thoughts out.

Where they originally were for yourself, now they take the form of publically providing value (which they can also do, no doubt about that)… But one should take heed from their own writings too, shouldn’t they?

The essence of a blog post

How long does a blog post need to be? Is there a predefined limit that we need to meet? Minimum words criteria?

The essence of a blog post lies in the meaning being conveyed behind the words.

One can stretch it for as long as possible to meet any kind of SEO purposes, or keep it extremely short and crisp directly implying the point.

For anyone who’s writing, the purpose is for the reader to understand what’s written, with or without context. Keeping their attention for that limited period of time. Ensuring there’s something to take away from that reading.

The post could be a one-liner or a five page read, as long as certain boxes are checked from the writer’s point of view.