I have been thinking about this since Matt Birchler wrote about it a few days ago. Matt has managed to carve out a huge market for what he has to say and often attracts a large audience and invitations to many podcasts. In many ways he does what we lowly blogger dream of, and all whilst not really trying — and being amazingly talented.

I hope that I am a sobering voice in the world of tech bloggers. I don’t try to write things that are scandalous or are just written to stir the pot of controversy, and I am not on any company’s list for getting pre-release hardware for reviews, so I don’t tend to go viral.

Is it right to think, or worry, about such things instead of just writing? I think it is nice to know where your angle is and stick to your guiding motivation. Otherwise, you can end up being one of those people that moves themselves into camps easily and publish content just to point towards one of them. Things that get picked up and get you loads of views are great, but often only fall into the extremes of arguments. No one is paying attention to the write-ups of their Magic Keyboard in which they are measured, objective and make sound judgements — which is where the issues can start to arise if you’re not careful.

Everyone wants views, clicks, watches, whatever the metric is that defines you, but we must stick to our principles and make sure we find our place in the market whatever we are doing. It’s easy to present them as facts, but presenting our ideas and making them rational and easy to understand is key to staying true to yourself and others. I hope I do a good enough job at this because it is one of my main focuses when hitting publish.