With 40K Views Being My Highest Month For Last Year Do I Even Blog Anymore? Does It Matter In A World Full Of Millions?

I don't have millions of views as a youtube channel, nor do I have a blog with hundreds of thousands of views a month, nor do I have a twitter account with 10-25K+ subscribers that this is linked too, or have a FB channel with 100K+ subscribers -

which begs the question - should I even blog anymore?

In the world of social media where hundreds of thousands of views are common, or there are thousands of views for just one post, or millions of views can become the norm - does blogging still serve a purpose?

Take views out of the equation and I don't even offer discussion or debate via comments.

So?

I guess I would answer that question - for myself and in general - in a number of ways:

1. Medium. Medium is producing some great content and writers, and another portion of the grassroots community of blogging. A new service specific to blogging must mean that there's still an audience for bloggers out there wanting to do what we do (and other existing platforms as well).

2. Curated/Edited/Pointed. We should have as much access to information as we can - but it doesn't mean it's all good, newsworthy, talking about, offering an opinion on, or critiquing - and there's something to be said for who makes those decisions - but there's a difference between sharing a link via social media, and offering comments on a link, versus the actual content that makes up that link itself. Two different animals. Bloggers edit and curate what they talk about (overall), and I'll hold weight to a blogger who's been blogging about a specific topic(s) or communities (either in length of time or from an informational standpoint). It's not specific to blogging (as this is a trait of youtube channels and twitter accounts or FB pages) - but it's an overall theme for bloggers.

3. Not Writing For Your Friends Is Something Different. Sometimes I just like to throw things out - but there's a difference between writing something in a post on FB and writing something for the world to see (provided it's a public blog) and that can get picked up by search engines, referenced, etc. In some ways, it's a whole different ballgame. More polished in many ways.

4. Still Need Grassroots Writers. Twitter is great for many things, but longer writing pieces meant to critique social structures, or talk in depth about race or social justice - you can't get that on Twitter (nor would I want to read that on Twitter). And you need people outside of the status quo news agencies to still provide more viewpoints - viewpoints that aren't provided because of sponsorships, ads, worrying about a board, or a program possibly getting cut - blogging is still one of the equalizers in getting voices - and sometimes those are Asian American voices - heard. I love the fact that more news outlets have some tailored sections to the AAPI or POC experience - but they're still limited in what they can say and the viewpoints provided. They can't say anything. Bloggers can.

5. Do Views Even Count?. Well they certainly can, and it's great when a blog can help push and make change on large scales - but it's not everything, and I believe in small ripples having larger effects and quality over quantity (which can be different for everyone). It really depends on the mission and intent of the blog and blogger - what do they want to accomplish. If it's to get millions of views and your pushing 10K a year - something to look at. But if it's to archive, put another voice out in the community - that's a different mission. Sometimes it can be a fine line when thinking about it all - if no one reads but your topic is archived is that enough?

There's more to say on this - but for now I think this works (*_*) and for me - all the above matter and hold true from an AAPI perspective (and I'm happy for the views that have made it here because I think there are some great news topics getting another look) - and even if one day the views are 100 a month - I'll still be doing this - in part because I was happy to be at 100 views when I first started this thing -

And because it's also about the record.

The archiving of at least one AAPI's POV.