On College and Blogging

This past Saturday I spoke on a panel about blogging to students at the UNC SMART Conference. The conference was a short, half day event designed and put on by Career Services, and was quite successful for their first effort to put on a social media focused event for the students.

Blogging while in school is a very conflicting topic. I was told once I should blog about my honors thesis on sexuality in cartoon music. As fun and interesting as that was, I’m sure that all of my past and future employers would love to be reading that document right now and learning about how many cartoons I watched and how I perverted them. Really, I want everyone to think I’m some some kind of kinky, cartoon-obsessed freak in addition to being a social media sociopath.

So, while blogging never worked out for me as a student, there was more I wanted to say though to the students listening to my panel. These are the major highlights I think I or the  panel missed that we should have covered.

• There are hundreds of reasons to blog – While we may have focused on careers, there are lots of great reasons to start a blog that have nothing to do with being professional. Maybe you just like to tell funny stories. Maybe you want to show off your cool drawings. Or maybe you want to take videos of your cat and then force hundreds of people to watch them. All of these are just as acceptable and qualified a reason to blog as someone who write about business marketing, and sometimes it’s easier to build and connect with an audience around these topics.
• Emphasize quality over quantity – Given the time, we can all write 100 crappy blog posts. If you’re a student who’s transitioning and looking for a new job, writing posts that are quality is more important than quantity.
• Nobody is perfect – There are millions of bloggers out there all with different agendas and purposes. Just because one blogger is successful doesn’t mean you will be, and for most blogs there is no straight-forward path to success. We all make mistakes, and we all can do better. Just do your best with your resources and you’ll be fine.
• Stick to a schedule – Readers hate blogs without any kind of schedule. It makes it hard for them to know when to come by. Figure out what you can do, and start blogging on that schedule. Similarly, if you have a schedule, and you can’t keep up with it, rethink it. There is no right or wrong answer about how much and how often you are supposed to blog. Again, think quality.
• Have fun –  You’re young. You don’t have to be a boring, stuffy professional. Your blog should reflect you and your awesomeness. That doesn’t mean you can’t be professional, but you can create something that is new and exciting without having all the baggage of a long career with you.

What would you tell today’s college students about blogging? Embrace the medium? Run for your life? Keep a healthy distance from bloggers like me? Let’s get the kids on a better path to success than we are on.