Setting a mission statement for your blog is an important part of defining who your readers perceive you to be, what you write about and where in your niche you fit in. It’s an important step in defining what you are trying to achieve as a blogger. it’s also something I hadn’t thought about much until now.
I realized just recently that not one of my blogs had a mission statement. That my focus was more on generating content than it was on focusing my content based on what I was trying to achieve. Without a mission statement, it’s easy to drift from topic to topic, rendering your overall content a useless, cluttered mess.
That all changes today.
In all actuality the mission statement of this particular blog has been in place since Mach of 2009. In that month two very important things happened. Firstly, I called BullS**t on the world of snake-oil marketers. Secondly, The death of Paul Harvey, one of America’s most influential voices, made me pause and evaluate the way I should be doing business. These things combined gelled what I’ve been doing, but until today it has never been written out. It should have been.
From this point on, the following mission statement will be hung on my office wall where I can refer to it every time I write an article:
Mission Statement
My mission is to provide factual, relevant information to bloggers and writers with absolutely no BS involved. I will not represent any information as fact unless I have tested it and proven that it works as described. If it hasn’t helped me, I will report that it has not.
That’s it.
As a mission statement goes, it’s not complicated, but it holds the focus of Jerry D. Russell dot Com to one topic, with one goal and one focus. This blog is about the business of blogging. The mission statement forces me to remember that.
With that focus in mind, I can make sure that articles on topics that aren’t quite blog-centric can find a home on my other properties. There will probably be a fit for them there. After all, my cooking blog focuses on food, cooking and the culinary industry, it’s not a great fit for posts about blogging, that’s what this site is for.
In the same bent, even though readers of my cooking blog don’t mind a little information about my family and events, that’s not what they read that blog for, and it’s why I have a “Daddy Blog” where I can just talk fatherhood, parenting and work at home dad stuff.
I hope that this will inspire you to write a mission statement for your own blog. Defining what you are trying to accomplish with your writing will help you to keep on track on those days that you feel the need to drift.
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I don’t care how much of a writing machine a person happens to be. Even those ferocious and seemingly unstoppable bloggers that routinely crank out up to three full posts per day occasionally find that they simply can’t find anything to write about at the moment.
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