I’m single handedly trying to lift a near dead art form up from a seven year slumber. It seems like everyone stopped blogging in around 2015 In the intervening years folks would post “I really should get back to this” blog entries but then would find themselves deep in Facebook world where their writing was hard to find and search and sometimes limited only to friends. Or they would post on twitter where the link sharing would happen but without the added reflection and sometimes you’d have to battle bots and trolls to participate. Sure twitter threads are okay. But why not just blog?
(And when I say “folks” I mean me. Projection is a specialty of mine)
I get why folks don’t blog and would rather post on Facebook. It seems like it needs too much work, seems too polished. Requires a regular schedule. So I want to make it easier with a few things that might help you get blogging. (Again, even)
Get a free platform with an RSS feed. If you don’t know what that means, just sign up at Blogger or WordPress. Those sites have good mobile interfaces so you can write from your phone (like I’m doing right now). They come with great templates. They are upgradeable and transferable to your own domain and they can export your posts. An RSS feed is how we can subscribe to your writing via a newsreader like Inoreader.
Don’t be perfect. It’s a blog, not the front page of the Globe and Mail. Think out loud, make typos (typos drive engagement, lol), put half formed ideas out there. Post whenever you want. Whatever you want.
Don’t worry about your brand. I think this one hamstrung me once I had a professional redesign my site in 2015. My brand IS learning and curiosity and half thought out ideas that folks are interested in. I support innovation and learning. That’s messy and edgy sometimes. Also I’m human. It’s nice to read words written by a human. But I don’t blog to sell my brand.
Give stuff away. If you make things, give some of them away. Blogging is a gifting culture. We up lift one another. My site here is full of stuff that I have made and others have made that has been released into the wild. Generosity is beautiful. Having said that, let us know how we can hire you or buy your art, because that’s how you make a living and it’s nice to give back.
Share links and quote people. Sometimes a blog is a place for your opinions or personal thoughts. Also take time to share good things on the web. The etymology of “blog” is a contraction of the word “weblog” which comes from the idea that we log cool things that we find on the web. You want to know who is REALLY good at that? Dave Pollard especially his periodic link collections. Incredible things to read and think about.
Comment on stuff you read. Facebook has done a marvellous job of colonizing conversation. I have seen some amazing threads there with all kinds of useful content shared and explored. Same on twitter. But, can we find them again? Are they indexed and easily accessible? Nope. They are fleeting. Facebook and Twitter are happy they happened because it improves their semantic learning, but they aren’t interested in your community or your colleagues or you. So go directly to people’s blogs and share your thoughts. I am interested in you.
Basically I’m encouraging you to blog with just as much care and attention as you do with a Facebook post or a tweet. but by blogging you are doing it outside of those places in the wild where everyone can see it and participate. You don’t need to battle trolls or get drawn down algorithmically generated attractor basins because of what you write. You will be free.
What other tips do you have?
I have been thinking about starting a blog for four years now! This is the push I needed!
You can do it!
I did it!!!
I don’t have any tips to share, but just wanted to say thank you for a piece that is perfectly timed for me. I’m updating my website along with my offerings and have promised myself I’d actually use my blog this time, but have been skittish about what to write. (Which is why I hardly ever wrote in my current/soon-to-be-past blog.) I’m going to print your post and keep it in front of me as a reminder and encouragement when my brain or my will freeze up. Thank you!!
Beautiful. And it’s weird isn’t it? We’ll post all over twitter and Instagram and Facebook but suddenly when it comes to a blog we’re get all giddy. Let’s change that!
It IS weird, when you think of it like that! Well, I’ll let you know when my new website and blog are live, and I hope you’ll visit and comment! ?
It IS weird, when you think of it like that! Well, I’ll let you know when my new website and blog are live, and I hope you’ll visit and comment! ?
Of course!
I’m commenting in order to put some energy behind this. I’ve noticed a blog a day from you for the past 4 days or so and was wondering what was going on.
Trying to break some patterns and form some new ones. I probably haven’t written more than usual over the past four days but it’s just all here out in the open.
Thanks for the nod about my Links of the Month, Chris.
I know it’s a cliché but setting aside some time to write every day is not a bad practice. It can be any kind of writing. Because I tend to write longer articles, I try instead to meet a monthly ‘quota’ of 11 articles or more. That’s 2-3 times a week. I don’t beat myself up if I don’t make it every month, but find it a useful self-discipline. Being retired also helps, though surprisingly I actually wrote more when I was working full time.
Agreed about making it a practice but I definitely felt like it was putting pressure on myself to do it that way. But I love crafted work.
Hey, faraway friend, near-to-heart fellow traveller, mate and (I am just learning, with grief) fellow mourner in tenderly recent loss of a beloved father…
So sorry about that last part. Not-knowing is a sometimes-high cost of walking away from most social media.
I’ve been having parallel thoughts, with the minor difference of NEVER before having blogged consistently. I’m swimming in thoughts worth sharing, that (as you describe) I’m always jotting down anyway. I was looking yesterday at a domain I used a few years ago for related purposes and thinking “Does it matter if there’s an audience?” I am in, going to give it a go too.
Consider yourself to officially have an audience of one. Post the link when you have it.
Hi Chris – I’ve been following your writing and musings for some time now and without exception I always enjoy them, feel inspired by them and/or give me pause to reflect.
Thank you especially for resuming your blogging in this more open space. I’ve felt somewhat allergic to FB, twitter, etc. My feelings about participating or sinking too much of my time & energy in those spaces have been very mixed.
What you’ve written here, the tips you’ve shared have inspired me to share my thoughts & feelings more directly. So, you’re the first person I wanted to respond to directly today.
I deeply appreciate who you are and what you contribute to the world!
Sabine
Sydney, Australia
Thanks Sabine! I’m glad to hear from you. So many folks outside of the walled gardens are starved for the conversation happening within. But we can do it here.
[…] blogger I admire, Chris Corrigan, just wrote a blog called How to Blog stating his intention of trying to “single handedly trying to lift a near dead art form up […]
Dear Chris, I thoroughly enjoy your posts and especially this one about blogging. I also recently left Facebook. Now I am trying to be active on LinkedIn primarily to connect with more like hearted folks professionally:) I so resonated with this post… I also see my blog as my space for myself… Usually thoughts strike me at odd moments of the day and i feel like exploring them on the blog… I like to link to other folks and mindfully appreciate those who influence and impact me. I like drawing parallels from different parts of my life. For me blogging after an experience of facilitation helps me process it, draw out learnings and find some closure or let us say a bridge to the next experience. It also allows me to be present in that experience a little longer and really soak in all that happened. Keep writing!
Thanks. Me too. I think I started blogging because I was already sharing stories on listservs and the conversations afterwards were really helping me learn my craft. I’ll add yours to my list of reads too!
Thanks for this, Chris.
You have made an excellent point about the benefits to posting on your blog rather than on Facebook. I blogged for a couple of years, starting way back in 2008, and updated my blog at least weekly, then time constraints drew me away.
For FB, I guess it’s a more fleeting time investment (minus commitment) every day, that after a few days, ends up surpassing the time a person would have spent writing one blog post. I think for me, I felt more pressure to keep updating the blog, and then, to also visit the blogs of those who commented, and to reply to comments.
You have got me considering going back to it actually, which surprised me! 🙂 I enjoyed reading through my old material last night. However, while I’m writing my novel, when I’m not peeking into FB or proofreading, I will be investing most of my time in the writing to get the novel out there. Blogging may occur after it is published…as I’m writing this, I’m thinking…it may occur before, while the test readers are reviewing it. A blog for the novel might be a good marketing process.
I do have friends that write openly and get feedback on their books as they go. But it’s that time suck if checking Facebook and putting things down there is actually useful, why not do that out here too? It’s the idea that blogging is a higher form that somehow needs a higher quality of attention. It CAN be that, but I like the raw stuff that thoughtful people out on Facebook and wonder why not out here? The reason is that we have normalized conversation at Facebook and that’s seems a shame because not everyone gets to see these conversations. But if they are out on the blogs, awesome!
Chris–
One does not need to make blog posts long. My blog (I will not provide a link here because I am not posting to try to get people to come to my site) consists of one or two line posts, sometimes poems. I take many of them from my daily journaling. No need to make blogging a big deal, yes?
I was not aware blogging was a dead artform!
It’s been a long time, Chris.
:- Doug.
Very inspiring! After deleting my Facebook account a few years ago, I haven’t been sharing much of what I’ve read, which is unfortunate because that’s how I learn: sharing forces me to slow down and think things through – as opposed to frantically consuming information as if it was never enough – and that really helps me turn informationinto knowledge. The thought of sharing my own thoughts (!) feels very intimidating (probably because of the limiting belief that I need to be innovative if I do), while sharing what I’m learning seems more accessible.
Practical question: any advice on what to do with sharing on the same blog in either French or English, depending on the topic? I guess I could just tag each post with the language it’s written in? Translating everything seems a bit daunting…
Write in all the languages. It’s now possible for anyone to get a decent translation, and although the nuance is lost by the reader I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t write in the language that beat catches what you want to say.
[…] P.S. If you don’t blog, and are INTERESTED, check out these suggestions from Chris. […]
Thank you, Chris. I needed this invitation and your example of shameless sharing!
Well, I have been pushing right through any external gaps in the pre-blogosphere and the blogosphere, and the post-blogosphere. I don’t do it for many folks, and mostly for myself. pushing 8,000 entries, thousands of images, 1-2,000 audio bits, and a couple hundred video pieces (most of which are offline because of yet another round of format changes because of technological change). I’ve pulled the site through five major platform changes. Not sure why I continue. I was a FazeBuch early adopter (as I was teaching the effects of technology on human relation), but bailed 12 years ago, never looked back on that void aside noting that it did suck the oxygen out of most other conversations online.
[…] inspiration (again) from Chris Corrigan and his recent call for a return to blogging, like others, I am going back to my blog and taking ownership of my words and thoughts. Twenty Four […]
Blogigng isn’t complicated; people just make it over-complicated myself included 🙂