In the best tradition of blogging about blogging, today’s post is all about getting started with or getting back into blogging. Recently I have had lots of conversations with folk who would like to blog more, but don’t. Or who feel they *should* be blogging more often, but they haven’t actually managed to do so.
If that’s you and you are looking for ways to get your blogging mojo back, this post is for you. There’s no judgment here. Just some practical approaches you can try to get (back) to blogging regularly.
But, first… ask yourself this question: do you want to HAVE A BLOG or do you WANT TO BLOG? These two things, to my mind at least, don’t necessarily mean the same thing. Lots of people, organisations and companies have blogs. Blogs that might function a bit like newsletters, or communicate community updates. A blog can be a really effective tool for communications and marketing, and as such, you might be obliged to blog as part of your job. That’s not the kind of blogging I am talking about in this post.
This is not about having a blog, but about the practice of blogging itself. The process of getting whatever you want to say in a post and press publish. It’s about the joy of blogging, the sheer exuberance of having a space, a domain, to make your own.
My husband-to-be and I often talk about blogging, and he has written many posts about blogging as an OER, blogging as an industry, blogging and academic identity and more. I strongly suggest you head over to his blog if that’s the inspiration you are looking for. Over here in this post, let’s focus on blogging as practice.
Start small
A blog post can be any format and any length. It doesn’t have to be 500 words with references. It doesn’t have to be any particular format. It can be one sentence, one image, whatever you want it to be. Your next post is not going to be a masterpiece, or the great novel you might dream of writing. Start small and give yourself a chance to succeed.
Imagine what you would suggest to a student or a colleague who came to you for advice about how to get started with blogging. What would you suggest to them? What would you encourage them to do? What would be good enough?
Apply those same standards to yourself and start small.
Blogging is not a to do list
Lots of colleagues I talk to have a list of things they wish they had blogged about but haven’t, which covers anything from conferences presentations to new pieces of work. They have an endless list of things they feel they ought to cover, and that can make the task of blogging daunting.
Maybe it works for you to have a dozen unfinished posts sitting in your dashboard, ready to pick up again when your thinking has progressed and those thoughts have percolated sufficiently. If that’s part of your process, then stick with it.
But if unfinished posts or lists of things you ought to blog about are a barrier to simply getting a post out there, I would suggest parking these for a time at least or deleting them all together.
If you are looking for a topic, just tune in to your interests right here and now. What’s in your mind? What is interesting? What are you curious or excited about?
Blogging as a habit
I believe that blogging is a very rewarding habit to cultivate and given that I have blogged for two decades, it must be working for me. And it does. I get a lot out of the process, other than ‘having a blog’. Here is why I blog:
- I’m excited about something I want to share
- I need some space to think through or reflect on something
- I want to document something for future use
- I want to keep a record of things I have done
- I want to journal (in a public way)
- I want to have things to put into my newsletter
- I want to share an image I love and talk about it
- I want to celebrate something
- I want to contribute to a conversation or discourse
- I want to show my solidarity
- I want to amplify the voices of others
- I want to do something helpful
All of these motivations ultimately mean that blogging makes me feel good. I write plenty of posts that no one reads and no one comments on, and it doesn’t make a difference to my process. Of course I want people to read what I blog about, but I don’t focus on that as I blog and its not my main motivation.
I would, and often do, blog, where no one can read my thoughts.
So might blogging do for you? What can you get out of the process? What do you want from it? Figuring that out is the key for blogging to become a regular habit. Just like anything else we try to do regularly, from exercise to reading, blogging has to serve us and reward us for engaging.
Yes, AI-powered tools could blog for you, but why bother?
As a blogger, many of the tools I regularly use now offer me, to put it politely, various levels of so called smart approaches to generating content more easily and quickly. From smart compose to full on writing posts for me. Sigh.
Why bother? The point of blogging is to blog. Why would I outsource that to technology.
Some (fun) ways to publish a post, quickly (with examples)
Sometimes I lack inspiration for blogging, and I still want to do it. So I come up with easy ways to blog, quickly. This often helps me get out of my head and into a more creative frame of mind. It works wonders for taking stock in times of stress and often cheers me up as well.
Here are some examples to help you find your own ways to have some fun, and publish a post, quickly.
- Blog about blogging – example
- Try a different way to blog – such as voice recording
- Blog about something exciting – such as a recent event
- Find inspiration in the season – I love autumn
- Blog about something small – or your pet
- Get involved in a national awareness day or campaign – as I did last month
- Blog about your newsletter or podcast or other output – example
- Make a list of small wins – I make one every year
Right, let’s get blogging. Good luck!
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