Hi YATMers, I’m Maya Smith, a marketing apprentice at Life Balance Chiropractic, a chiropractic clinic in Dorset.
I’m working towards a multi-channel marketing qualification so I get stuck into pretty much everything! Meta Ads, social campaigns, websites, Canva, you name it.
I also just graduated from Creator Lab 2026 which has been really cool as I was able to connect with so many people from this community!
My recommendation is the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service. If you haven’t seen it, just watch it. It’s so fun has a great cast, brilliant style and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s the kind of film you finish and immediately want to recommend to someone. It gets a 10/10.
Let's make sure we connect today.
Here I am on LinkedIn
Here's where I work
When AI turns ideas into summaries, the blog is where the original thinking lives.
The reason I still blog is a long way from how the internet worked in 2013.
People don’t move around the web in the same way, but that’s ok. Search gives answers before people reach the source. Social platforms want the full conversation to happen inside their own walls. AI tools repackage what has already been written.
It’s easier to ask, “Why keep writing on a blog at all?”
If clicks are harder to earn, attention is more scattered, and people can now get the short version before they ever reach you, why still bother?
I now look at things differently and my answer is that the blog is not just where I publish ideas, it is where I find them.
If you have a central place, it’s where you come back to sharpen your voice and thinking. Original thought is more valuable than ever.
Our AI lives do not make original writing less important, it makes it more relevant. You still need something to draw from.
For many years, I treated my blog like an archive. I used the analogy of a library, of a place where finished thoughts are stored. It was somewhere people visit where they can see the work.
From a different stance, it’s a place where a thought can be tested, stretched, questioned and shaped into something more useful for people and for yourself.
The way it has developed for me is to have early formats of ideas that I started, that I come back to, so I can develop.
As an example, I wanted to figure out what it takes for people to buy into your work, when it doesn’t sit within an industry or an existing system, so in 2024, I wrote this on why it’s the extra effort that wins. I only realised this year that buy-in works when you people know how to behave when they step into your space, you can read here.
It’s taken four years of fighting this out, but I had a place to come back to.
You Figure It Out, Over Time
Writing has helped me figure out what I think.
I see it in three phases…
1) The blog gave the newsletter somewhere to come from.
2) The newsletter gave the community somewhere to gather.
3) The community gave the ideas somewhere to be lived.
When You Are The Media started, in 2013, it was a weekly email and a website where I could publish. The focus was about encouraging people to have an owned approach to their work and to avoid a middleman.
Back then, blogging had a different feeling around it. People talked about content as a route to being found. You wrote, people clicked, Google noticed, and traffic became part of the reward.
Today, clicks cannot be the only measure anymore. Not because clicks don’t matter, they do. It is still good when someone takes the time to visit, read and stay with an idea that you worked on.
If the whole value of a blog is reduced to whether someone clicked, we miss the whole point and that’s why people give up when they don’t see the results they wanted.
It becomes a record, a pattern and proof of thinking. It also becomes a place people can enter years later and pick up the thread of how your thinking adapts.
That is why I still write. The internet never owed us an audience, but I want somewhere to begin, somewhere to grow and somewhere to be found again.
We’re Scattered Everywhere
Most people now meet us in fragments around the web. It could be a clip from a podcast, a LinkedIn post, a comment or an AI summary.
This is powerful for all of us, as it helps us to be seen, but fragments do not always show the full picture of what we want to get across. For instance, if you saw a LinkedIn post from me, it shows what I think today, but the blog shows how I got here.
Trust is rarely built from one post, it’s the patterns that you thread together. Someone may arrive through one article, then they subscribe. Then they come to an event and then they feel a part of it all. Then they bring their own ideas into the space.
That does not happen because one post performed well. It happens because there is a body of work waiting for someone when they are ready. It’s there to show people you put in the work.
A Place Of Origin Helps
Without a place of origin, everything becomes detached from its roots. When this happens, ideas become easier to flatten. It just becomes lines without the thinking or content without the context.
I look at social media as the place where our ideas travel, and the blog is where they remember where they came from.
Every year, people who make and share work become more dependent on systems they do not control.
Algorithms change.
Platforms change.
Search changes.
AI changes.
Formats change.
What gets rewarded changes.
The danger is letting those spaces become the only place where our thinking exists. We are not just sharing inside someone else’s system, we are storing our memory there too.
Someone discovers an article from three years ago and sends you a message (that’s happened to me). A sentence you wrote becomes the start of a talk (I’ve done that). A reader spends time moving through your work and understands you far better than they ever could from one post.
Let’s Round-Up
The value was never when you published first, it was in keeping going.
This is why I still blog when today does not promise clicks.
The point was to keep a place where ideas could be found, trusted, built on and returned to.
It’s important to give people somewhere to go when they want more than the fragment. It means you can then share your thinking and links with other people where it can be useful.
It can still be the place people return to when they want the full version.
That is why I still blog today. It’s not because the web stayed the same, but the work still needs a home.
Share this with someone else 💌
youarethemedia.co.uk/why-i-still-blog/
Time Wasting
Go to an online rave that is happening, right now!
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This Week Around The Web
GROWTH, CREATION & YOUR INDEPENDENCE
LinkedIn has declared war on AI slop - from Joe Lazer
👉 Not deleting but more about letting the algorithm decide.
The difference between human and AI storytelling - from Jeremy Connell Waite
👉 How a story is constructed matters more than how it is written.
THE COMMUNITY YOU CAN BUILD
Free communities are not generous - from Martins Affovoh
👉 Free means you don't have to show up
Being a little more social can change your life - from Greater Good
👉 Testing your doubts is a big first step
GROWING YOUR NEWSLETTER
Email marketing benchmarks 2026 - from Brevo
👉 The average open rate is 20.73%
How will newsletters win in the AI-Powered inbox? - from InBox Collective
👉 AI won’t kill newsletters. It will kill weak newsletters.
The spaces you feel part of...
It’s good to feel part of a space where you are not judged.
You do this by creating the conditions where people feel safe enough to become more of themselves.
We are living through a time where so much of life encourages performance. Algorithms reward certainty and businesses reward professionalism with the AI tick.
But you and I, as everyday people, are not drawn to those who see you as you are and still wants you here.
The YATM Summer Party next month...
The YATM year is from September to April and then it's the 'finals' with Creator Day, in May. We close it all with a summer party. It's just like being back at college.
It's going to be Thursday 16th July and our own private place on Poole harbour. If you'd like to stay over the Travelodge (£70 for a night) is a two minute walk.
We're going to have a silent disco, we'll have food and it's going to be the perfect way to close the past year and say, 'see you again in September.'
Our friends at Grapevine are helping out and making this all happen. That means it's only £25. Let's start at 6pm and I know we'll head into the sea at 7.15am on Friday.
Book here and I'll get the evening sun out for us.
We're adding new learning sessions to YATM Club...
We’re making YATM Club stronger.
From this month, we’re adding a flagship learning session every month, shaped around the ideas that help us build better work, grow our own audience and to keep going.
We start on Tuesday 30th June with Phill Agnew, above, looking at newness and sameness. Too much sameness and people switch off. Too much newness and they don’t know where they stand.
In July, Jon Alexander joins us to explore participation, citizens and how people become part of what we build.
This is what YATM Club is for: learning together, applying ideas and helping each other grow. Join the Club here it's £90 + VAT a quarter or £330 + VAT for the year.
Here's the video to close today's email. Enjoy Thursday...Mark
