10 tips for (reticent) bloggers…

A colleague who teaches writing, draws incredible poetry and prose out of her students. Yet she has what she calls ‘writer’s blog’ (block) which prevents her from starting a blog. Another has just had an incredible learning experience and spent four hours organizing her thoughts and experiences by writing blog posts… despite not having a blog, as she feels uncertain whether others will be interested in what she writes.

It seems they are not alone…

When I started blogging, I struggled to find my voice. My first few posts (some of which were subsequently deleted) sounded as if they had each been written by a different person. Then I realised I didn’t need to try so hard.

10 tips for reticent new struggling teacher student  bloggers…

1. Write in your own voice, as if you are talking to people you know.
2. Don’t over-think and over-plan, just write what’s in your head. You can write another post when you have developed your thinking further.
3. Don’t agonise over whether it’s good enough. Write, check, post, done. You’ll improve with practice.
4. Never force it. If an idea for a post isn’t working, scrap it.
5. Avoid long slabs of text. Write in paragraphs. Use headings, images and bullet points to express your thinking clearly and ensure your message is evident.
6. Don’t explain everything. Use hyper-links to existing explanations on your blog and elsewhere on the internet.
7. Shorter posts are better than long ones. Always. Big idea? Break it into two posts. Small idea? Sometimes one paragraph is enough.
8. You don’t need to have all the answers. Some of my most successful posts have been composed entirely of questions.
9. Exclude all words that just don’t add anything. This was the very best piece of advice I read when I first started blogging. Carefully re-read posts that you have written and  try to remove all the extraneous words that add little or nothing.
10. Exercise humility. (The tips above work for me, I’m just sharing…)