So You Want to be a Blogger: My Blogging Process
People sometimes ask me how I got into blogging or why I blog or how often I blog or any number of other related questions. Many of these people also tell me that they also want to blog but don’t for any number of reasons or they can’t figure out how to get started. I’m going to be honest, I like writing, so all of this will be more difficult if that’s not true for you. That said, even I have trouble getting words on a page sometimes.
Why Did I Start Blogging?
How and why I started blogging are a bit interconnected. Box used to have an active internal tech blog. I also found that earlier in my career, as I tried to advance, I sometimes struggled with how to have more impact and broader reach and how to make sure that the needs of my team (at that time, Enterprise — we focused on features for our largest customers) were understood on a level closer to how end user features were understood. The internal blog seemed like a good medium to make this happen. I didn’t post very frequently, but I did every now and then. At some point, I entered management, found I hated it, and left. A lot of people started asking me about my decision, so I decided to try to write about why I left. A large part of why I wrote that post was actually to organize my own thoughts as much as it was to share any of those thoughts with anyone else. I posted it internally and it instantly went viral within our company. Not long after this time, our head of engineering also left and right before, I scheduled a final one on one with him. One of his big pieces of feedback to me was to write more. He pointed out that I’m good at writing and as a more introverted person, it provides a good avenue to give myself exposure in a way that’s comfortable to me. So I took a leap of faith and republished that initial internal post externally as my first real post on this blog. That post has been wildly successful (at least from my perspective) and I’ve been writing ever since.
So What Is My Process?
I get my ideas from conversations I have, things I read, and experiences I have. I chose a topic because it’s something I want to think through, something I want to help myself remember or something I want to share. I aim to post something every two weeks or so, but realistically it ends up being less frequently. At any given time, I have a long list of possible topics and a shorter list of 3–5 that I’m more actively thinking about in the back of my head. Next, I’ll just start writing. For my first draft, I just try to get words out onto the page. I don’t try for perfect, I don’t even try for good, I just try to get my thoughts out. Occasionally, I’ll do a super rough outline, but often I won’t even do that. Once I have all my thoughts written out, I’ll start rearranging, cutting and expanding. I’ll typically go through 2–3 revisions before I’m reasonably happy with the post. If I’m unsure of the post or if I think it’s an especially charged topic, I may have a trusted friend read it over for me and give me feedback. I work to incorporate their feedback, read through the whole thing one final time before I work on final polish. While I’ll often work through the layout of paragraphs, headings, etc. as I write, I add images and usually re-work the title at the end. Then I publish the post, add it to an appropriate publication (if it makes sense), and finally I’ll share it with my network (via one or more of facebook, slack, email, twitter, or linkedin depending on the subject).
Write for Yourself
All of that sounds much easier than it really is. Over the three years that I’ve been doing this now, I’ve learned a few lessons along the way. Most importantly, I learned that I need to write for myself. My first post has had by far the most success of any of my posts. In fact, it has had many more views than all the rest of my posts combined. After that first post, I found myself getting caught in the trap of trying to make every post just as popular and getting vastly discouraged when they weren’t. It caused me to write more on topics that I thought other people wanted to hear about rather than what I wanted to write about. Doing this was both harder and was incredibly discouraging when the posts didn’t get picked up. Eventually I realized that while it’s exciting to see a post take off, if I was going to keep this sustainable and fun, I needed to write first and foremost for myself. That meant writing about the things I wanted to write about and making sure I got something out of the writing process itself. Of course I always aim to have people read my posts, but that’s my secondary goal, not my primary goal.
Aim for Good, Not Perfect
Another lesson I quickly learned was to aim for good or even really good, but not perfect and similarly, to write about things I know, but not necessarily things I’m an expert in. While it’s great to have a perfect post or to write about a topic for which you truly are an expert, both of those are really high bars and can prevent you from getting anything across the line. If you are writing for yourself, some of it is about the writing itself. Improving your writing; finding your voice. Every post I write isn’t gold, but I try to not let that stop me. I obviously still try to make each post as good as I can, but at some point, typically after no more than a couple of days from when I get a completed first draft, I decide that it’s good enough.
Be True to Yourself
At least in women in tech circles, people often talk about personal brand in the professional context and how important that can be. Something like a personal blog is a rather big part of my personal brand and at first, I worried a lot about how I would need to strategize and make sure that I told exactly the story I wanted to. I quickly realized that, like trying to be perfect, this was debilitating. If I tried to figure out exactly the best personal brand and then tried to tell exactly the right story to get there, I was struck with indecision. I came to realize that instead, as long as I stay true to myself in each post and write about the things that I care about, while I may not project the ‘optimal’ brand, I will, at least project a ‘true’ brand. I do try to make sure that the things I write about represent the broad range of things I care about in the sense that I try to write about technical topics in addition to career topics and women in tech topics (and not just stick with one topic). I even write about running since that’s what I spend much of my free time doing. I would probably agree with almost everyone that running posts aren’t supporting my professional brand, but I also don’t think it’s detracting and it is helping to complete the true picture of me. In the end, I’ve been able to far more effectively create my personal brand by not thinking about it and instead just trying to stay true to myself in every post.
Don’t Embarrass Yourself, Do the Research
In order to even potentially have a good post, it needs to not be embarrassing. There are the obvious things like checking my grammar and that I’m using a consistent tense. I check for spelling and for the overall flow. The one thing I have to work a little harder to remember is to do the research. When I’m talking to someone, I can vaguely cite something I heard once and it may be somewhat credible. When I’m writing publicly, however, I’m setting myself up as a semi-expert and what I write will be out there for anyone to read. Forever. This means that if I incorrectly cite some statistic, I could end up looking foolish or worse, propagating incorrect information. If I heard one time that seat belts were originally calibrated for men and not women, I should probably look up that research and cite it. And if I can’t find it, or only find it in other blog posts, or worse find that it was a false story, I change my article (and I learned something!).
Make it Catchy
Now despite the fact that I write primarily for myself, I do want to have people read my work. To that end, I do what I can to make sure I put the best face on my story. There are a lot of great tips about getting something read and a lot of other people have already written about this, so I’m not going to rehash it all here. This article from Dinah Davis covers a lot of the formatting and sharing tips and tricks. Interestingly, it appears that it doesn’t matter when you actually publish your post. Post length does, however, matter — it appears that seven minutes is the optimal length and while quality matters far more than length, it is important to make sure a post is succinct. If I have more I want to say, I can always break it out into another post! I would say all of this is just icing at the end though. Having quality content and writing matters the most, but it never hurts to put a good face on it.
Most Importantly, Have Fun
I think by far the most important part of the whole thing is to have fun. If it becomes too much of a chore, I have a hard time forcing myself to continue especially since writing isn’t explicitly part of my job description. In order to stick with something it either needs to be a habit or something I want to do, so I try to keep writing enjoyable. This is actually part of why I occasionally write about things like running and sometimes pick topics that are probably less strategic or less helpful but that I am more excited about. I do try to write the important things too, but I also give myself permission to have fun.
