What I've learnt about blogging so far

I confess: I want to become a communications expert of some type, however, before entering Creative Communications at Red River College, the thought of creating a blog seemed useless.

How I’ve learnt since then.

Blogging brings your thoughts to life and shows off your writing skills. I know, it sounds intimidating, what writing skills? But the more you write, the better you get. I find that posting blogs pressures me to think more critically about the way I am writing and to make sure everything is grammatically correct. Think of it as a school assignment where teachers will be grading you work, except that that is only one persons opinion, now you have an audience.

Having an audience then makes me think about entertaining people. Why should people be reading my whole article? Why should they even care about what I am writing? And one of the most important questions I ask myself is what my point is?

Towards the beginning of my classes’ blogging career, a group of well known bloggers came and told us to never write if we didn’t actually have something to say. I found this the best blogging advice I have ever received. It is also the most obvious advice, yet is still something I always need to remind myself.

I feel at this point my blog is still struggling slightly with this and it is something I am trying to solve. For example at the beginning I made a post on a potential dance choreography based on a scene in which a group of servers have a temper tantrum on customers. Why would anyone have cared about my vision? That was a post likely better suited for a journal at home.

So another thing I have learnt is to try and inform people in some way. Make them want to care about what you are writing. Don’t just write because it interests you.
By interesting and helping others you establish an audience –one that hopefully gets hooked on your blog. The bigger your audiences, the more people you have to spread the message that your blog is great, then more people become readers and then the circle repeats.

Who knows maybe an avid reader of your blog will become a future employer of yours. I know I am beginning to wish more and more that my blog may open up the possibility for me to become a restaurant reviewer or PR personnel for a restaurant. I am beginning to see the point of having a blog, which is that it serves as a creative display of your work. It gets your name out there. It hones your skills. And hopefully, it will open up job opportunities for you.

So although my blog may not be perfect yet, I am beginning to have big dreams for it. My plan from here on is to establish a clearer focus and to stick to it. To both entertain and inform. To discover my own style of writing, for example, am I a serious writer? Humorous? Academic? Colloquial? And ultimately, I want to reach a point where I know my blog is successful and why it is successful. At this point that focus is blurred but developing.