Dries Buytaert

Last week, I shared my frustration with using social media websites like Facebook or Twitter as my primary platform for sharing photos and status updates. As an advocate of the open web, this has bothered me for some time so I made a commitment to prioritize publishing photos, updates and more to my own site.

I'm excited to share my plan for how I'd like to accomplish this, but before I do, I'd like to share two additional challenges I face on my blog. These struggles factor into some of the changes I'm considering implementing, so I feel compelled to share them with you.

First, I've struggled to cover a wide variety of topics lately. I've been primarily writing about Drupal, Acquia and the Open Web. However, I'm also interested in sharing insights on startups, investing, travel, photography and life outside of work. I often feel inspired to write about these topics, but over the years I've grown reluctant to expand outside of professional interests. My blog is primarily read by technology professionals — from Drupal users and developers, to industry analysts and technology leaders — and in my mind, they do not read my blog to learn about a wider range of topics. I'm conflicted because I would like my l blog to reflect both my personal and professional interests.

Secondly, I've been hesitant to share short updates, such as a two sentence announcement about a new Drupal feature or an Acquia milestone. I used to publish these kinds of short updates quite frequently. It's not that I don't want to share them anymore, it's that I struggle to post them. Every time I publish a new post, it goes out to more than 5,000 people that subscribe to my blog by email. I've been reluctant to share short status updates because I don't want to flood people's inbox.

Throughout the years, I worked around these two struggles by relying on social media; while I used my blog for in-depth blog posts specific to my professional life, I used social media for short updates, sharing photos and starting conversation about wider variety of topics.

But I never loved this division.

I've always written for myself, first. Writing pushes me to think, and it is the process I rely on to flesh out ideas. This blog is my space to think out loud, and to start conversations with people considering the same problems, opportunities or ideas. In the early days of my blog, I never considered restricting my blog to certain topics or making it fit specific editorial standards.

Om Malik published a blog last week that echoes my frustration. For Malik, blogs are thought spaces: a place for writers to share original opinions that reflect "how they view the world and how they are thinking". As my blog has grown, it has evolved, and along the way it has become less of a public thought space.

My commitment to implementing a POSSE approach on my site has brought these struggles to the forefront. I'm glad it did because it requires me to rethink my approach and to return to my blogging roots. After some consideration, here is what I want to do:

1. Take back control of more of my data; I want to share more of my photos and social media data on my own site.
2. Find a way to combine longer in-depth blog posts and shorter status updates.
3. Enable readers and subscribers to filter content based on their own interests so that I can cover a larger variety of topics.

In my next blog post, I plan to outline more details of how I'd like to approach this. Stay tuned!