What's the point of blogging?

Olivia Cleans Green started as a marketing tool for my residential cleaning service, but I joyfully chose to end that service exactly one year ago. Still this blog and the website containing it exist. Why?

Honestly, nerding out about baking soda and vinegar was always my favorite part of running a green cleaning service. I also loved sharing everything I learned with clients, friends, neighbors, and anyone who would listen. I met one of my best friends through my business' blog.

I kind of see April as the ironic birthday month of Olivia Cleans Green the blog because that was when I shifted my focus to what I loved about my business: learning, sharing, and connecting.

A year later, that's still my reason for blogging. I'm not promoting a service. I don't blog because I want people to buy stuff, though I am totally grateful when people do make purchases through my Amazon Affiliate shop. I toy around with the idea of creating a product, but I honestly don't feel strongly compelled to fill a gap in the market.

I log into Blogger and show up at the compose screen here because I simply love doing so. It's one of the easiest, most uncomplicated, emotional-baggage free "tasks" in my life. It makes me happy and gives me a sense of community and purpose.

My goal this year for Olivia Cleans Green is to connect more deeply with people who value and crave healthy living, joy, and community. One step toward this is to leave a comment on at least one post, or at least clicking "like", after I visit a blog. (I'm embarassed to say I don't always take the time to comment; mostly because I hate Captcha but I'll get over it.) I'm aspiring to write a guest post to appear on at least one blog a month. I'm also determined to begin participating in Twitter's #FF starting this week. Speaking of Twitter, I want to make a stronger effort to thank people for following me there too because it really is awesome of them to hold space for me like that. I'll do this at least once a week.

I'd love to host a Thank You Thursday link party where party goers post links to a blog post by someone else that was helpful or inspiring to them during the past week. How fun would that be?! I'm going to try to make it happen- even if just on a small scale- this week. (More info to follow. Get in touch if you'd like to collaborate on this too.)

I have about a million other ideas too, but I think five steps is enough for now. Maybe in the summer I can do more once I have mastered these actions.

Do you have a blog? What's your reason for blogging? What are your goals?


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