No offense, but I think all these are BS, and if no one is reading or linking to you, they're unlikely to apply. Blogging so that you might manage to get five people using improbable search terms to find your site is a waste of time.

But you still should blog if no one reads it for the reasons some other commenters have alluded to: to develop your own mind. That's essentially why I blog: http://jseliger.com/2010/09/27/signaling-status-blogging-aca... and read other people's blogs.

That, and so I have a repository of already expressed ideas I can leave in the comments sections of other blogs and HN, so I don't have to reinvent the answer every time.

I've definitely found this helps for developing ideas. I think what first prodded me into doing it was realizing that much of my interesting thinking was coming in making long posts on forums (Slashdot, HN, various other places). Nothing wrong with that really; discussion catalyzes thinking, and "writing a reply to a comment" has less activation energy than "writing an essay".

But I eventually realized that my writing output had this weird gap. On the one hand, I had 6+ page academic papers, all official and published and whatever and listed on my publications page. On the other hand, I had literally tens of thousands of comments scattered across the internet, one to a few paragraphs each, with no real way of pointing to them or even finding a comment again myself. Writing blog posts fills a nice gap. They can be somewhat longer and digress from the immediate conversation that spawned the ideas, and I have something to point to in the future (and find myself).

The other thing I do now is keep a text file of comments I've posted that seem worth finding again (as opposed to ephemeral discussion), with the URL of my comment and some notes on what else I might want to say on that. Has only sort of worked out so far, because like any "list of things I might want to do someday" they mostly don't get expanded into blog posts, but it feels like a step up in organization.

I was expecting something more along the lines of: articulating your thoughts and discoveries benefits you personally. That's why I blog. Nobody ever reads my programming blog - although I do have 14 followers on my old-house blog.

You could write stuff on paper - God knows I've filled a few reams in my lifetime - but a blog will be easily found even if you're on vacation. I really like blogging my notes.

I really like Steve Yegge's take on this topic: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-bl...

"So your fear is justified: practically nobody will read your blog. Unless it's good. Even then, it'll be a very long time before lots of people have read it. Don't worry, though. If you put in the effort, and you write honestly, people will eventually find their way there.

...

I never advertised my blog, and to this day I have no idea how so many people found out about it, let alone why they read it. I certainly haven't made any effort to try to please people. My blog isn't "about" anything, and although there are various running themes, I haven't tried to stick to any particular subject. And I'm horribly inconsistent in my tone, posting regularity, writing quality, and so on. But I'm really just writing for fun, and even if everyone stops reading my blog, I'll still be happy with what I'm writing."

Almost everyone one of those requires that someone actually read the blog, so the title is completely wrong.

Yeah, I think they meant "follows it on a regular basis".

Not entirely true.

1, 3, 5, 8, and 10 all work even if nobody at all follows your blog.

Ok, honestly what does this title want to convey? If I knew my blog posts are not being read and I still want to keep writing, I might as well start writing offline and not blog. That will be my two bits in saving world resources!

If you need to do a better job communicating about your field, writing can help.

If you already are incredible at communicating in your field, you probably won't remain unread for long assuming your field has media relevance.