Every blogger and every user of any other social media platform has a goal. There is always something … an outcome that they hope for and work toward. Whether that outcome is making a friend, or making a sale, there is a goal.

Those goals are each different, and they are often not entirely clear to the individual, but one common thread is that we all want people to read what we have to say.

With any luck, they will subscribe, come back, read more, add their replies, and click “Like”, “Tweet”, and all those other buttons to share it with their friends.

Luck isn’t enough! They will need reasons, and everybody has their own … reasons. It is your task to find those reasons, and I have some ideas that I truly believe can help you.

My optional title was “Why Do We Blog? (or Not): A Question Every Business Should Ask”. I just thought I’d share that upfront. I have some thoughts on blogging, and since it’s been a week since I blogged, it is a biggie. No worries, though, because if your eyes are too tired to read, you can click the play button for the audio version.

I write a lot. I write somewhere upwards of 2,500 words per day. It varies widely, but to say that I spend a lot of time with a keyboard is an understatement. I once went totally off my rocker and wrote three books in three months, along with blogging “on the side”. It was a good lesson in insanity.

As I recently took a seven day break from blogging, a question that has been rattling through my head is “Why do I blog?” The question is not on my mind because I don’t want to do it, although that happens, too. The question is more a matter of focus and purpose. If I know why I am doing it, the purpose is enhanced, and the message becomes clearer. Just like any other business effort, there should be a good reason for it. Periodically asking the question of why I blog keeps things making sense. Similarly, I think every business should ask this question of why they do, or do not blog.

I’m trimming back my blog reading, and I thought I’d share my reasons, along with some benefits I discovered. I’ve been working on this for a while, and I’ve trimmed it down to a small fraction of what my reading list once was.

As I scroll through my blog subscriptions to hand pick the ones I find most valuable, there is a nagging thought I just can’t seem to shake. It forced me to question how much of the information in blogs is simply re-worded hyperbole and borrowed thoughts picked up at another blog, versus truly unique and useful insight.

This is not a blanket insult of bloggers at all, but rather an observation, and a compliment to the ones who are doing exceptional work. We are each influenced, to some degree, by the blogs we read. That can be a very good thing, but it can also have some downsides if we are not selective. I wrote about the influences around us in a recent article titled “Social Media Self-Analysis: How Are You Being Influenced?” I think it is worth some serious consideration of how this influence can affect the topics and tone of a blog.

It takes less than a single minute to find somebody willing to write a blog for under $10 per article. There are thousands of writers begging for business. Not unlike the phenomena that anybody with a camera can be a photographer, it seems that anybody with a computer is an eloquent writer. That’s fine, but with such a low cost to have a blog, it is easy to confuse cost with value.

What is the value of a blog article? There are obviously some variables, right? Do you know the variables, and do you value them appropriately? Some important considerations are the time or money to produce the article, its usefulness to the public, the accuracy and experience of the writer, and the longevity of its circulation. These are easy factors for many people to overlook, and can inspire a lot of confusion about the value of a blog.

One great benefit of social media is the ability to communicate with others in the format and space they want to communicate. Some people will choose to discuss a topic on Facebook, while others choose LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Amplify, or a squillion others. Many people will pick a handful of networks to focus their attention, based on their interests or their intended audience, and monitor them vigilantly. Google+ is climbing the ranks of preferred networks very quickly!

Blog readers and writers take note: You probably don’t notice this challenge much from a reader standpoint, but if you are a blogger who is paying attention to where your content is being discussed, you probably see this all the time. Do you ever notice that there are comments in about 37 different contexts spread across a handful of networks, all related to a single blog post?