The trauma of writing a blog post...

So… blogging. A new venture for me. Having spent the last ten years writing a regular personal diary, I initially felt that blogging was the next easy logical step and one that I would be able to make without the slightest wobble in my usual stupidly high heels.

But.

 

Actually, blogging is quite tricky. On sitting down at my laptop to write my first post last week, my brain decided to wipe its memory clean of any topic that my fellow bloggers might find the slightest bit interesting, with the exception of debating Strictly vs X-factor.

 

Confused as to why I was finding it such a struggle to find a topic that was remotely blog worthy, a bit of research into what a blog should actually do seemed appropriate.

 

Paul Bradshaw and Lisa Rohumaa, Online Journalism Handbook: “If we are to try to define blogging as a genre, it is first, and perhaps above all else, conversational . It is social. It is networked. Two key features to a blog are links and comments. Fail to include either and you risk talking to yourself…Secondly blogging is typically incomplete,open and ongoing. It is about process, not product.”

 

The quote above, cheakily pinched from my University’s MA Journalism blog (http://kingstonma2012.wordpress.com/) seems to sum up what I should be aiming to achieve. Hence the reason I have spent the last 40 minutes attempting to connect my Facebook and Twitter accounts to this blog (not that I actually have very much on here for people to read at the moment but it’s a start!) Another handy hint seems to be that focussed niche blogs attract more followers. (Could be a problem: off the top of my head, all I feel like I am doing at the moment is trying to juggle a new job, my uni work and trying to avoid spending too much money on coffee in the uni canteen.)

 

But I am feeling positive. After scrolling through pages and pages of other blogs, I feel that I have a better grip on what a blog needs. I know I have the ability to write a coherent sentence and I enjoy using social networks too, so linking everything up isn’t a problem. Seems to me, that all I need to do is carve myself a little niche subject in the world-wide web and the words will come.

 

I just need to figure out what it is going to be first…