Talking about blogs
I often speak to classes about ways to build your personal brand... and I consider blogs as the core of that brand building process. A blog is a space to share your brain, your interests or at least examples of your professional work. The more you post and share and collaborate, the easier it is for search engines to find our who you are and what you're all about.
Today I spoke to a group that is assigned to post weekly blogs. It's a task I enouraged a few years ago. Students early in the Missouri School of Journalism should try to think about web-based writing early on in their journalism career. I'm glad it was added. About a year from now, the students in today's class who start blogging will end up taking my class. That means I end up reading what these young bloggers write. After a few semesters of reading these old blog posts, I realized I need to better explain blog tone. That's what I tried to do in class today.
What is blog tone? What I mean is I think there's a difference between a "dear diary" tone and a conversational tone. I've found many new bloggers who are given an assignment to use a blog tool start off sounding a bit giggly and nervous. Often the blog posts talk about fun with friends, student life and comments that sound similar to "Oh my gosh! I just reported my first shift in the newsroom." I challenged the students today to try to think about their tone as a professional from the start. They can be conversational: "My newsroom shift included the challenge of traveling two hours into our viewing area to shoot a package, get back and turn it within an hour and a half. It was exhausting but I'm proud of the final result."
The only way to learn about the difference between diary and conversational is tricky. So I told the class that this is a great time to jump into blogging. For most students in the classroom, there's at least a year before they head into the "real world." They can learn a conversational tone with enough time to practice, get input and then jump in feet first into the less officialy, but just as important ways of delivering news, information, thoughts and experiences.
By the way, if you're curious about how I'm trying to tackle student fear of failure, feel free to visit my new blog post on PBS's MediaShift blog.