Learning to Blog or Blogging to Learn

Once you’ve gone through the initial birth pains and learning curve of setting up your blog, then begins the rewarding phase when you’re no longer learning to blog, but begin blogging to learn.

If you’ve never blogged before, then you’ll have a steep learning curve to go through while you learn the technicalities of blogging, together with the language used by bloggers and the protocols and ethics of the blogging community.

However, once this period is over and you get into your stride with your blog, the learning doesn’t have to cease. At this point, you have a choice. You can continue bumbling along, writing your regular postings on your particular topic using your new found blogging skills, or you can push yourself to learn more about your field of interest, expanding your, and your reader’s horizons in the process.

To Blog, or Not to Blog?

If you’ve got this far, then at some point you must have answered this question and made the decision to start blogging. For myself, it’s been about two months since I took the plunge (after much deliberation) and started this blog with my first posting.

But why did you decide to blog? Well, I suppose this must essentially be the same for most bloggers, because you wanted to share your knowledge or experiences with other like-minded individuals.

Like everyone who’s started a blog before, I’ve been through the initial stages of complete blogging ignorance to a level of moderate blogging competence and have learnt a massive amount in the process. Whilst I’ve learnt a lot about blogging through this, the learning opportunities haven’t stopped, but have actually just started!

Two Way Traffic

While you may have set your blog up in true altruistic fashion, to share your pearls of wisdom with an unsuspecting public, for it to continue to grow there has to be two way traffic. If you’re not getting anything out of your blog, then ultimately your enthusiasm will wane and your blog will fizzle out.

What you get out of your blog may vary. Some may write a blog just to get stuff off their chest, which can be quite cathartic in it’s own right, but is essentially a one way street. You can only shout from the rooftops for so long until you get a sore throat!

A lot will gain from their blogs via the comments left by readers, engaging in the community aspects of blogging, sharing experiences or opinions and questioning established ideas and concepts.

However, there’s also a more subtle and indirect way to get something back from your blog…

Research

Once your blog is up and running, you will probably begin to write about your chosen subject. In the initial stages you’ll have a lot to talk about, waxing lyrical about things you’re passionate about. In your haze of enthusiasm you are likely to think you can keep this up until the cows come home. Unfortunately they do; usually around milking time!

As time goes on and your back catalogue of topics begins to dwindle and your well of knowledge dries up, you’ll need to start digging deeper to research your topics. This research may take you in directions that you wouldn’t of previously considered, sparking new and fresh ideas. This could be instigated by comments left by your readers, or by your own research.

Keep Blogging, Keep Learning

During the process of researching your new articles, you’re bound to learn something new. Maybe it’s some new discoveries or the latest news, but it doesn’t matter what, it’s new, something you didn’t have before, and if you weren’t writing your blog, you wouldn’t have found it!

Perhaps it’s not actually new facts that you’ve learnt, but just by reading around you’re forced to question yourself and look at things from a different perspective, either way you’re gaining.

If you’re thinking that this doesn’t apply to you as you’re blog is not technical, but more socially oriented, then perhaps you need to think again. Seeing things from someone else’s perspective could be just the inspiration you’re looking for.

So once you’ve learnt to blog, keep on going, and soon you’ll be blogging to learn. At this stage, it’s definitely a case of the more you put in, the more you’ll get out.

The moral of the story is keeping on blogging and keep on learning!