A good idea is hard to come by, is a post by Graham in his thought provoking blog openeducator. He explores how we come up with ideas for blogs, and the fact that we sometimes spend more time wasted on worrying over the 'worth' of our blogs rather than just getting down ideas and reflections. Aside from wondering if anyone aside from Ken of Blogger in Middle-earth (thanks man) reads my blog, I have often worried that my posts were not good enough, or up to the standard of the crowd of educators I follow. What if they really do read my blog, will I make 'the standard', does it matter? I suppose only if they add to my professional development by commenting.It made me consider that my blog writing has been affected to some extend. If I go back to my not so far beginnings, I see I blogged ideas and thoughts with more freedom of discovery and exploration. Later on I wrote substantial blogs that seemed more for an audience than my own professional development, reflective thoughts and creative growth.
Yes there are many different purposes for blogs and perhaps we just need to be clear on what our is, or perhaps we need variety. I have developed as a writer by being much more aware of my 'potential' audience.
Finally sometimes we just need to get ideas down, for me reading my favorite blogs often inspires me to write a blog about the same or a related topic. In fact I often start my blogs with, Joe of TopBlog said . . .
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Tēnā koe Shaun.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought of using Google Analytics to monitor your blog? It's not a real bother, and can show some aspects of whose visiting what. PostRank is another with a slightly different aspect on how the data is collected.
Personally, I find the data I get back from these apps fascinating, though none of the information has really helped me decide what to write about in a blog post :-)
I get a lot of ideas for posts when I write comments on others posts. Other bloggers get me thinking. Sometimes I see the gaps and think, "there's a post or two here". Other times I feel a post should be written in reply.
Virginia Yonkers has just written one in reply to a previous post of mine, and so has Tony Karrer. We all pitch in and have a bit of fun with one another's posts.
Some bloggers don't though. They take the huff. I just laugh and move on :-)
Catchya
I have since joined Google Analytics, although too early for meaningful results. Thank you for your fantastic reflective comments, you should get a mentor award.
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