I wrote a post last summer about blogging and identity construction with a similar title. This one is a little bit more about the blog in-use, it’s construction and maintenance. This post was prompted by some questions that Eric Hoefler asked. Eric is getting ready to change focus and hit the road, and he’s thinking about how to manage his blog. In some ways I think that the questions he asks are worthy for anyone who blogs to think about periodically. Life is a journey, of sorts, after all, and we’re always getting ready for something (known as upterrlainarluta in Yupik). This is my response, (also posted as a comment on Eric’s original).
I thought quite a bit about most of the things Eric mentioned when I was in the process of setting up my blog and then, later, making adjustments in an effort to make it reader-friendly. I found Stephen Downes’ article How to be Heard very helpful.
At this point, I’m reluctant to mess with the format because I’m afraid of alienating people or screwing something up that readers might like, even if I don’t. It might be similar to the thinking that goes into a major change in personal appearance (wardrobe, hairstyle, etc), wondering how people will react. In the end I like the advice I got from Graham Wegner when I started looking for a new blog template. In so many words, he said that first you have to please yourself. So I shouln’t fret. There are a couple of things that I’d like to change on this blog, but I don’t know whether they’re important enough to deal with. I’ll try to tackle some of the questions Eric asked, applying my current thinking (as opposed to what I’m currently doing.)
The sidebar: I used to have a Recent Comments section, and a Top 10 hits list. I liked those things, and when I put the new template in, I disabled those plugins and never reactivated them. I want to turn those things back on, and need to hunt through the files for my old template to see where the code that does those things is located. The blogroll is something that I’m thinking of taking off the blog, and just including a link to. It’s already just a list on del.icio.us that displays on the blog. I wonder if it slows the page loads too much. There are other more political sites that I’ve started reading, and I’d like to share those links, too. But the blogroll is all (or mostly) education-related teacher sites. There are so many more teachers blogging now than there were when I began, and my reading habits have changed, how do we acknowledge that dynamic condition in a blogroll? It could require constant maintenance.
Post length: I work hard to keep my posts around 750 words, or less. I find that very hard to do. One of the problems is that when I want to contextualize a point I’m trying to make, I tend to quote from another source I’ve linked to. This feels excessive sometimes, and I wonder just where to draw the line on when, and how much to quote. The other thing I try to do is to stick to one main point, rather than throwing all my ideas about something into a post. Again, I’m not always as successful as I wish I was with this.
Frequency of posting: I’ve fallen down with this, lately, and I know why. For one thing, reading stuff on the internet – especially the political sites I’ve begun to read – has started me thinking about things that I don’t know a whole lot about. So I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing. I’ve also learned to be a little bit more careful about what I say. This isn’t necessarily a good thing because I probably self-edit too much as I compose, and I fear I may lose some spontaneity in the process. Still, I don’t want to look back over stuff I’ve written and feel like I was an irresponsible idiot for saying something. So I post less frequently, and try to avoid feeling like I’m on a schedule. Two posts a week sounds about right. I’d like to post more often, but that’s hard to manage with a job and a family.
The feed: I publish everything in one feed. Having a separate blog for different subjects seems like a good idea. In any case, I don’t think that we should avoid including personal information because it might not be “interesting.” Point of view is necessary for making sense of the information we get from blogs. As I said in my comment on Doug Belshaw’s post, Personal stuff is OK, if the person is interesting. No matter what a blog is about, I think that bloggers need to develop a sense of boundary for what they write. Not only is it a matter of privacy, but also one of coherence for readers, and this is involves judgments that every blogger has to make on their own.
Disclaimers: I don’t think that personal blogs need disclaimers so much as they should have statements of purpose. It’s a assumed, I think, that blogs are personal statements. We don’t issue disclaimers all the time when we talk, after all. However, I do think that corporate blogs, or blogs that are commercially sponsored, or represent an organization of some kind, should say so up front. After reading Stephen Downes’ article, I put together an About page as a way of clarifying my purpose in blogging. It was as much for me as it was for visitors to the site, and it was a good exercise. A lot of people have come to the blog because of that page. I even re-read it recently, and it helped me to clarify my thinking about something. One thing that I do think a blogger should absolutely have on the front page of their blog is their name. Whether it’s their real name, or a nickname. It’s good for other people who want to leave comments or mention your blog to know what to call you.
Eric asked some good questions. And he reminded me of a few maintenance chores that have been on the back burner for a while.
12 Comments
Doug,
I echo your thoughts on Eric’s post being helpful. Just in response to the point about personal information and having separate blogs: so long as people make different feeds available for various categories, that’s fine. And context’s fine as well – for example I’m sure everyone who visits my blog knows that I’ve slowed down a bit of late due to my son being born 6 months ago.
What I don’t want, though, is to have a take-it-or-leave-it feed that one moment is talking about sound pedagogical stuff and the next moment is showing a stag/bucks party. I’m sure you see my point.
Doug, I’ve mentioned elsewhere that when I started blogging, I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t have any notion of what the blog might be “about,” or even that it should be about something. It took me a while to develop a focus. But then I began to wonder whether there was a need to stay focused on that. It’s taken some time and reassurance from a few readers for me to understand that there is room for personal observations and anecdotes.
I enjoyed your “likes and dislikes” posts. A lot of those issues have been on my mind lately, and judging from the number of responses you got, they’ve been on the minds of several other people, as well.
Doug, the categories which you outline offer a good template for bloggers. Since I began blogging almost eight months ago, I have revised my template several times, and have edited my “About” page probably as much. I have not, however, developed a consistent posting routine. Like you, I get involved in not only reading other people’s blogs, but also reading other things of personal interest on the Internet. Which perhaps explains why my personal book reading had suffered. I try to not post on the weekends, so that I may have the opportunity to read and post on other blogs. While I like memes, I participate in them as the time and mood allows, but, it’s been hard to right in a more serious mode during the summer, as there is no ready-made fodder for greasing the blog when the classroom is dark.
While I want and do mix the personal and the professional, I try to keep the two balanced. I struggled back in February with the question of whether or not I should have two blogs: an edublog, and a personal blog. For the time being, I have resolved to maintain one blog. For the most part, I do believe that there is some learning, or at least I hope there is, in my personal rants on the state of things.
A really good post, and one which offers much for reflection.
I meant to type “write” and not “right.” Just wanted to put that out there.:)
Miss Profe, I agree about reading books. I’d like to spend more time reading them. And setting up a blogging schedule for myself would also be a good idea, I think, because the computer does take time away from other business. But I never follow schedules. Like right now, I should be out walking my dogs and getting some exercise.
Blog for your enjoyment, not the enjoyment of any potential readers.
You have no idea what the great unwashed masses will enjoy. You know what you enjoy. You start blogging for other people and it will get to be a job. When it gets to be a job it starts becoming unfun. When it becomes unfun you will lose motivation to write.
Pick a blog style/service that suits your style.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, such as sidebars. Don’t ignore your sidebar as much as I ignore mine. (I haven’t updated it for years, and that is bad.)
Accept that in the scheme of things you have very few readers (and I don’t mean that in a bad way, I subscribe to one blog that has 2000+ subscribers on Bloglines, which is a huge blog audience, but meaningless in the grand scheme of things)(I subscribe to the New York Hack blog and she got a book deal out of her blog writing… 400 Blogline subscribers)
Just noticed this, “I don’t want to look back over stuff I’ve written and feel like I was an irresponsible idiot”
Well then… That’s not blogging. Things don’t even start to get interesting until you cross this threshold.
Hey, Brian. Good advice this time. I may never become a real blogger, though, because I have this nagging feeling that someone’s gonna come along and call me an idiot. And I don’t want them to be right. Kind of like a game, maybe? I know I need a thicker skin, and I’m working on it. Thanks for your help. Really.
@Brian: as a professional, you do have to ’sweat the small stuff’ unfortunately – in many ways. For example, a few years ago it felt like anything you wrote online would float away into the ether. However, there’s been a couple of occasions where something I’ve said on a forum, etc. has been quoted back at me. Little things do matter. As do coherent thoughts and reflective practice.
I appreciate this post and your blog. I have much sillier, less focused reasons for blogging, and do a lot less analysis about content because I started blogging so that I could teach teachers about it. I therefore feel free to write about anything, although my general focus is my little part of Colorado.
I’m glad that you worry about length. Today, I unsubscribed from a blog which always has long posts. I realized that I never felt like reading them and instead checked “keep new” in bloglines. I subscribe to over 300 feeds. I don’t have time to read long posts, unless of course they’re actually *interesting* like this one. I’m off to rewrite my “about” page, and possibly even add a name somewhere to my blog.
Long posts bug me, too. Mine especially. And I wish I had less to say sometimes. I apologize in advance, because I know my faults and I won’t soon master them all. My wife calls it dribbling around close to the goal. It’s a soccer analogy. When you’re close enough, just shoot, she says. Smart lady. I wish I was as direct as she is.
Doug,
A couple of thoughts….
I worry less and less about my page’s look since I’ll bet most of my readers look at it through an aggregator, that said, I try to add things I think will be most useful to those who directly visit, for example my shared reading items and certainly an about page.
While I’ve never been one to write as eloquently as you and say Konrad Glogwonski, I appreciate that a few of my feeds will tackle ideas in more depth. You would be one of those. And while like Jude, I subscribe to a lot of feeds, I like the odd post that I actually have to slow down. Maybe living in Alaska does that to you.
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