To Blog or Not to Blog…
Photo by Aaron Lee on Unsplash
That is the question.
Maybe it’s a question you’ve asked yourself. It’s definitely a question that I’ve been asking myself for a long, long time. When chatting with colleagues, I often hear, “that’s interesting, you should write about that.” But, I’ve always had a reason not to.
I am a devoted blog follower. I appreciate that blogging has evolved into an incredibly powerful tool for information exchange, collaboration and impact. Over my years as an active reader, blogging has matured to become a valid and lucrative career option for a lot of people. I have no grandiose vision of becoming a “famous blogger” and padding my wallet with a blog side hustle. But, I am starting to recognize blogging as an opportunity to Make UX Better and I feel like I can no longer ignore this opportunity. I need to jump into the fray and up my game from commenting on blogs to sharing my ideas. No more excuses! It’s time to learn something new and put myself out there.
So, I had to start somewhere. As with everything I’m interested in, especially anything I can use to make UX better, I’ve started reading about blogging. I am not (yet) a blogging expert. This is my inaugural post, after all. So, I expected the information to be overwhelming; and, the Internet did not disappoint. I found that everyone and their brother has an opinion about how to start a blog and “be a successful blogger.” There are classes, books, blogs on blogging, tools for blogging, optimization strategies and checklists. I expected a smorgasbord of content and was pleased with the buffet that I found.
Those who know me, know that I tend to dream big. So, it didn’t take long for me to get excited and ambitious. I started learning about concepts like temporal content, evergreen content, advanced search engine optimization, publishing schedule strategies, platform options, plugins, social media coordination, cross-posting, traffic management, etc. If you’re starting a blog, you might be want to take a gander at a few of the interesting references that I enjoyed being lost in:
- How to Start a Blog in the Most Cluttered Marketplace in History – A nice little smattering of thoughts to consider from Ali Mese, creator of “The Startup,” Medium’s largest publication for makers. He also wrote another post about blogging that shares his story of getting started: The Truth About Blogging.
- 18 Epic Books Every Blogger Should Read (Books For Bloggers) – I am such a sucker for a list of books. I can just feel the pages in my hands! This is a diverse list of titles, including everything from the technical side of selecting and setting up your platform to social media for bloggers, content writing and strategy, productivity, marketing and making money. Oh, if I could only read all the books I want to!
- 10 Brilliant Examples of How to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang – So, overcoming this paralyzing empty page and starting to really think about how to start writing is really daunting. This post helped me start pulling together ideas for how to approach the topics that I want to write about, without resorting to the typical “list of things.” I guess I kinda failed there. Ha!
- 50 Blogging tools to help you work smarter, write faster and become irresistible to your readers – Blogs are just full of lists of stuff (hell, this post turned into a list of stuff!). But, lists can be so helpful and this list of blogging tools is very nice. Just about anything you could possibly ever need to build, maintain, market and track your blog is on here. Is there a way that I can put premium subscriptions to some of these on my Christmas list?
- 10 Amazing Blogs About Blogging to Start Reading NOW – Of course, you can expect that there will be blogs about blogging. Here’s a top 10 list that I found helpful in getting my feet wet. Then, I came across this list of top blogs about blogging as recommended by top bloggers (say that 3 times fast!): Top Blogs About Blogging in 2015 – WP Lighthouse. It’s a little dated, but everything I’ve accessed from this page seems to be interesting and relevant. And, then there are all of the blogging communities out there!
As my information voyage continued, I became acquainted with some “famous” blogs, tools and platforms that help you to learn how to blog: WordPress, Blogger, Blogging Basics 101, The Blog Herald, Quicksprout, Copyblogger, Chris Brogan, Problogger, Blog Tyrant, etc.
When I had hit the zenith of ambition and started envisioning crazy blog schedules, SEO details and suites of tools that would eventually completely consume my life, I knew that I had to decide what I REALLY wanted to do with this blog of mine. Then, I found a beautiful little post written almost a decade ago by Lorelle VanFossen: Example of a Perfect Personal Blog. In this post, Lorelle eloquently states:
“A blog, especially a personal blog, is a journey to find your voice, as well as to find yourself. [snip] It’s about being personal, not distant, with the reader. It’s about sharing. It’s about the story.”
I realized that this is exactly what I need to do. Apply a Lean UX mindset. Start small, fail fast and grow. So much about strong and successful UX design is about building relationships and telling stories. And, that is what I plan to do here. I hope you find something here that is valuable to you, starting with this post. And, I hope to get to know you and swap ideas about how to Make UX Better.
So, here I go, and I’d like to take you with me. Maybe you’ll be inspired to start a blog too. Maybe we can follow each other! And, if you come across a great “go to” reference on blogging, I hope you’ll comment and share it with me!