It's about time I blogged about blogging

As a deep believer in the positive power of reflective introspection, I feel it is time for me to look back on my evolution as a blogger over the past two months. What I have gotten out of blogging? Is this what I expected blogging to be like? What will my future blogging look like after this initial feeling out process? I was never one to keep journals or a diary but was always aware of the power of introspection. Always scrolling through thoughts, ideas, fears and dreams in my memory rolodex kept me in tune with my ever evolving self. Can blogging allow me to achieve similar results for my professional self? How can I use blogging to further my passion in history and gets others involved as well? Here is what I have learned so far...

1. Blogging is fun because we can all share!

As someone who never cared to write a diary, use journals or even a calendar for organization, I am finding this type of personal outlet enjoyable. I think that the potential possibility for communication is the straw that stirs my drink when it comes to blogging. A journal is meant for one person only, the author and the author only. A blog is different in the fact that it can be a personal journal meant to be viewed by anybody patrolling on the internet. I love the idea that I can talk about anything of interest to me at a particular point in time on my blog and someone interested in the same thing can find me. It's this communicative potential which is the real power of blogging. Historians especially should be harnessing this capability to engage in dialog not only between themselves but to the public as well. Too often historians perch in the ivory tower unwilling to engage in constructive dialog about their passions. But what good is a passion that is left unshared with people? This does not include the few dozen academics worldwide who may have read your latest publication, or couple hundred for the successful ones. I'm talking about engaging with lots of people about something that inspires us: History! Blogging is not a collective production, we still control the ideas and words of our blogs. However, blogging allows others to get into our brains without the constraints of language, form and content which are inherent in almost all scholarly publications. So relax everybody, the warm world of blogging is within our comfort zone of academic production, we just need to harness it!

2. Blogging is flexible, start stretching!

One thing that I really enjoy about blogging is the many forms it can take on. You can structure a blog anyway you want to discuss any topic you want. The freedom is astounding! Some bloggers prefer a very rigid focus that defines their blog. This blog is written to discuss x ideas on y subject. These blogs are great for content since they have defined parameters and all blogs are streamlined to fit within the overarching focus of the author. They are usually easier to find (another benefit) and can generate excellent discussions as people reading the blog will no doubt be passionate about the same particular subject. Conversely, you can blog about nothing in particular at all and everything all at once. You can blog about what you are thinking at a particular time, the great time you had last night or even about a really cool blog that you just came across. The possibilities are endless! These blogs are great for a lark, entertainment and also can be very elucidating about human nature (due to the spontaneous nature of this kind of blogging). I believe that I am somewhere in the middle of this dichotomy. I like to talk about historical things, but anything relating to history can be game for my blog. Already I have blogged about Holocaust Denial, Canadian National Identity and The Mongol Empire! Something biblical is probably coming too since I find the bible as a historical source to be extraordinarily fascinating. I even find myself blogging about entirely different ideas within a blog then I maybe started with (this blog no doubt will be the same I am sure of it!). For historians, this gives us a myriad of potential ways to structure a blog. We can blog about one thing in history or many things. We can have an academic tone or a casual one, or both. I say it's time for us to have our cake and eat it too! And while we are eating cake, let's share it with everyone as well.

3. Blogging is great, but people need to be able to find it!

The one real hiccup when it comes to blogging is getting people to read it. In the new age of the long tail, how can one stand out from the crowd? First things first, make sure your blog is good, no one wants to read a bad blog. Next it's time to start deploying a few tricks of the trade. Having learnt a few of these tricks from my Digital History Professor Bill Turkel (nice name drop, I’ll tell you why in a little!) about how search engines work, we historians can easily make them work for us. Using efficient keyword in your titles, linking sites with other historians (hence the name drop) and generating word of mouth buzz are all great ways to make your site show up where it counts. Historians have a head start in some respects since we have built in audiences ready to be tapped. There is such a public thirst for history that all we need to do is go out quench it. The internet allows us a communicative potential that far exceeds all the capabilities of reaching a physical audience. If historians are looking to get their ideas out there, the internet is only the most vast reaching social communication system ever conceived by man. Shouldn't this be the first place to go?

In the end this blog about blogging has really opened my eyes to the potentials of blogging for historians and for myself. Blogging is whatever we want to make it. Historians for too long have been cooped up away from any human contact outside the academy. If we really want our work to mean something, let’s share our passion with the world. Did musicians who wrote the wonderful symphonies and songs of generations past want their music to be heard by no one? Authors of great novels surely have a particular audience in mind, but their stories need to be read by great amounts of people in order to have deep seeded influence. The same goes for all forms of art, share it if you want it to mean anything! Historians are passionate about history. We weave seemingly unrelated events and ideas into extremely artistic narratives to espouse our interpretation of the past. Let’s share our passion and art with the world. Start blogging, it's a great way to start!