A post about blogging as an L&Der

I’ve been writing a blog now for about 8 years. I have a modest followership (totally a word I just made up). The topics tend to focus on people and the workplace, sometimes I write about personal stuff, and sometimes I write about topics to do with politics or diversity and inclusion or my religion.

My blog is a personal space of reflection that I’m happy to share with the wider world. I don’t pretend to be a ‘thought leader’ or anything other than someone who writes about things of interest. The things I tend to write about are innocuous enough that they don’t cause widespread readership, the subject matter tends to be of interest to a small community, and I write regularly enough that people can expect a blog from me once or twice a week.

Some people are kind enough to tell me that my blog helps them. That’s pretty ace when that happens. Some people tell me that because I do this blogging thing, it puts me into a leadership space amongst L&D. That’s pretty kind too. Through the blog, I’ve been invited to attend various events and provide coverage in return for a free space. That’s fair enough in my books.

There are a fair number of people whose blogs I enjoy reading, and at the same time, regularly meet people whom I would love to hear more from. Blogging is a fairly easy game. I tend not to draft my writing – my writing is thought in action. I often know where I’m starting and then let the writing take over. Where I end up is anyone’s guess!

If you’ve attended any of my positive psychology sessions, you’ll have heard me describe blogging as my third place. What I mean when I say that is that it’s my place to escape. Which is why I do it regularly. I don’t blog for any particular reason than my own reflection and my own sharing practice. If it builds or leads or supports, that’s pretty great. There are days I’ll publish a blog post and it will get minimal reading. There are days I’ll publish and it’ll do well. I can never predict, and rarely try to.

Here’s a sense of how my blog ‘performs’.

My best year of blogging was in 2014, when I had 25,000 views. Last year, I had 16,000.

In 2016, my best read posts were:

• Delivering a new kind of L&D
• L&D, Rhetoric and Perpetuating Myths
• 13 Years of L&D Later
• I’m a cisgender, binary, Indian, heterosexual male, and here’s why that matters
• What is performance consultancy?

I’ve never had a blog post with more than 280 views. My average is about 30. A good day is about 60-80.

I’ve also been experimenting with blogging on LinkedIn and on Medium. They provide a completely different audience. On LinkedIn, I can get better readership in a day. On Medium, it tends to be far less. I tend to enjoy writing on Medium where I can be a bit more creative in my writing. WordPress continues to be my go to place for blogging, though. It’s my home. And for those who are aware, I have two different WordPress blogs – this one, and the one on my consultancy website Challenging Frontiers.

Thanks for reading and for those who keep coming back to read, thank you too.