Blogging And That

Here's one for you, blogging, right? It's a bloody obsession, that's how it feels at times. It's Monday evening, and I'm writing a new post. This one. But I almost didn't write it.

I'm in my home office. The day's work done. I felt the familiar urge to write. Then, an idea struck me: jot down a few notes about blogging.

Ha, yeah. No chance. Nobody wants to read what I know about blogging. The way I go about it? Not likely to help anyone. Hang on, sod off. Give it a go. It might help some folk. Write it.

I dunno. Might be rubbish. Yeah, well, if you don't write it, how will you know? Good point. I'll give it a go.

I'll start at the beginning.

I was there, right? In 2009. Blogs. Pfft! Only geeks have those, I said. At the time, I did a fair bit of feature writing. I would come up with an idea, pitch it to an editor, and get told to do one. Try another editor, get commissioned, now and then.

But blogging? Nah. Hang on though...

I noticed journalists were blogging. So, I thought, why not? Off I went. with no idea how to do it or what to write about. So, I did what my journalistic training taught me. Wrote like that. About topical stuff.

But then, I noticed something else. A lot of blogs contained loads of personal stuff. People writing about their lives. It offended my journalistic mind at first. Being trained the old-school way. Where my opinion should never get out there. But the more I looked, the more I saw blogging had a rebellious streak. I liked that.

My blogging tip for you is this: Write what you want. Bollocks to the drivel about SEO. I mean, yeah, if you are in marketing I suppose. But I reckon the best blog posts are ones that say how it is. For that person.

Writing that way makes it human.