I enjoy a good Shakespearean soliloquy. The play is romping along, the characters are interacting with varying degrees of wit and confusion, and suddenly one character steps forward, turns to the audience and addresses them directly under the pretence of speaking to him or herself. The soliloquy works because it doesn’t stand alone but is supported by all this preceding and subsequent activity — not to mention the framing of the stage, props, music and costumes.

An effective blog, I’ve decided, is a soliloquy. It can’t be a lone voice crying in the wilderness. It has to emerge from, and help create, a community. Making Light is an excellent example.

For the last couple of years I’ve been thinking about blogging — its role and why I’m so spectacularly unsuccessful at it. I started at the wrong end. I should have started by finding a community I’m at home in and building my blog from points I want to share, but which don’t find a place in current dialogue.

Because while a good blog creates content, a great blog creates content for a specific audience and nurtures that audience into a community.

There’s some discussion whether blogging is becoming passé. I’d argue that it may change form or publishing platform, but that the essential power of it will remain: independent, free publication of new content.

Content creation is the defining difference between the lions of the social media world and the rest of us ants. I scurry around, picking up crumbs and carrying them here, there and everywhere. A lion hunts down a juicy issue and gnaws on it, occasionally growling and snapping at vultures.

To blog or not to blog is not the question. Instead ask yourself: Who are you? Where do you belong? and what do you have to say?