Blogging With A Purpose

2008 marks my second year in the blogshere. Towards the end of 2006 I made a decision to have my own blog after lurking in the Kenyan blogshere for a few months. At that time, my mission was to blog about money and hence the choice of my blog name.

One year later, I think it's about time I defined my blog rather than continue blogging for the sake of it.

Before I do so, I'd like to re-examine/re-iterate why I blog. And here goes my reasons;

1. To express myself; enuff said.
2. To sharpen my thoughts; I don't know of a better way to focus my thoughts other than to pen them down. By writing down my thoughts, I am able to analyze my thoughts. Even though I don't publish all my posts, putting my thoughts into words gives me a chance to critic myself.
3. To improve my communication skills; Writing has never been my strong point. In school I struggled through English, Kiswahili and French classes while I excelled in everything else. Through blogging I get to work on my writing skills and thus improve on my communication skills.
4. Interact with others; No doubt the internet has opened a whole new world social networking. I've gotten to people who I'd not have met if I had not taken up to blogging.

Now that I have gotten the reasons of my blogging out of the way, my next step is to define what my blog is about. In my very first post my focus was 'money or the lack of it'. In the months that followed I went on to publish 150 plus odd posts on diverse issues. So what is my blog all about?

1. Money; If I can put a dollar sign on something, then I will blog about it. By and large, the focus of my blog has been money. Until 2006 I'd never attended a business class but always read the business section of every newspaper that I could get my hands on. This blog captures my passion for business.
2. Morals; Just because you can put a dollar sign on a lot of things doesn't mean I will blog about anything. For this reason, I will steer away from anything that I consider to be unethical, immoral or illegal. The focus of this blog will be the triple bottom line (i.e people, planet and profit). Call me conservative, but make sure you spell my name correctly on the check.
3. Motivation; If this blog can be said to be an extension of myself, then it has to be positive or optimistic. Thankfully, I am not a cynic, pessimist or whiner. There may be a rant or two but for the most part, I will strive to be uplifting. The world is not all that rosy but I will not focus on the negatives.

Unlike the majority of 175,000 blogs that will be created today and fold up within a month, I have no intentions of hanging up on this blog in the near future. Instead I will seek to make my blog relevant in the face of the 60 million blogs that are active out there. Because there's not enough African bloggers in the blog sphere, it's imperative that I continue to hold forte with the less than 30,000 African bloggers. For that reason I intend to continue blogging into the second year.

That said, my high point last year was getting some of my posts published in Seeking Alpha which I consider to be the premier financial blog aggregator that has in its ranks blogs written by respectable professional money managers from Wall Street. Of the three posts that were published in Seeking Alpha, two were syndicated by Yahoo Financial.

For someone who has taken up blogging as a hobby, getting syndicated on Yahoo Financial is a great honor. What's more, I read a post on Seeking Alpha written by a financial profession expounding on a topic that I had previously blogged. I could also have sworn that I read some of my thoughts in one of the regular BusinessWeek column's soon after my post was syndicated by Yahoo.

In conclusion, I would like to ask anyone who reads or stumbles on my blog not to email me with their personal problems. As it is, I have enough problems of my own and I may not be the best person to seek help from. That said, I welcome non-personal (i.e. business, charity, investments or entrepreneurship - related) emails, chit chats, comments and phone calls if you have my number. I am also open to ideas and suggestions that would make my blogging experience worthwhile.

Last by no means least, I would like to thank everyone who has spared their time to read my blog and found it useful/interesting. I also appreciate the blogging companionship of Kim and Jabi of Thinking Kim, Maina of Kenya Capital Investment Club, Fedha who writes Fedha, Sue of Jamii ya Kenya, the elusive Pesa Tu who writes Pesa Tu, Mwari who is no-where to be found and the numerous anonymous readers who have yet to break through the cloud of anonymity.