In the age of viral trends, create a lasting legacy
In the world of short-form content, the average user’s attention span has declined to mere seconds. In such a time in history, starting and maintaining a blog seems like a paradox. But this is precisely why you should have one. With low attention spans, social media is evolving to catch every latest trend. From viral fight videos to current political outrage, social media algorithms are in a rush to show you everything, even when it doesn’t matter.
In such a time, against such advanced algorithms, we need a semblance of timelessness. The average lifespan of a post on social networks is probably two hours or even less. All of your ideas will disappear in two hours from the timeline. Once in a while, you will get lucky, and one of your ideas will reach a wider audience—“go viral.” But from the next post, it’s going to be the same again. Even if you build a sizable audience on any platform, a small portion of your audience will consume your content, but it will still disappear into oblivion after a few hours.
A simple blog with your essays on points you feel strongly about will remain forever. A random reader, if interested in your thoughts, will look for such a library of content. As a writer, it is your duty to build such a library of content to satisfy those readers. This library will become your identity. It will give readers a glimpse of who you are, what you think, and how you arrived at those thoughts.
Readers who end up devouring your essays will become your lifelong followers. You are writing for those readers. But without a library, a reader will not remain loyal to you for long. You cannot build an army of fans based on small, condensed posts of 280 characters. Short-form content is meant to give them a taste of your ideas. Essays are where you explore those ideas in greater depth, distilling them further, and taking the reader to the most logical conclusion.
Writing essays on the ideas you believe in strengthens your opinion. When you are forced to explain your idea without falling prey to any fallacy, you achieve a renewed clarity in your mind because you have addressed all possible arguments. Every essay begins with a hypothesis and ends with a conclusion, an answer of sorts that satisfies the reader. The more you do it the more rapport you build with future readers.
Build a library of content for posterity—a library that can help an anonymous reader on the internet. Write timeless essays. Write not for short-term views but for building your identity and your future fans.