The Case for Student Blogging - Student Blogging Series

If you aren't already convinced, you need to start blogging. Right now. Stop reading this post and visit Wordpress.com and sign yourself up. Then we'll talk. Let's kick things off with a Common Craft video:

If you haven't heard our pitch yet, read on.

Every Student Needs to Blog

Blogging is an ugly word. It sounds like "clog." People associate it with flamers and politicians and Fox News and LiveJournal. Blogs are seen as a place to whine or an extra source of white noise.

Blogging, though, will change your life. In more ways than one. It has for the staff of HackCollege, at least. HackCollege has been going strong for nearly 2 years now. After all this time, there's still one thing we're lacking: regret. We chose to start a blog about lifehacking in college.

We've changed a little bit over time. If you have a passion, you need to blog about it. (I hate the word "passion.") Passions usually align with your major, or maybe they don't. Whatever you know or want to know more about, you need to blog about it. Blogging changes the way you think; you become much more critical of the world around you. And no matter how bad you are at writing, you'll learn. I'm still working on the writing thing.

Because of the blog and not the podcast, we've been approached by multiple larger organizations. It's awesome. Starting a blog establishes credibility and gives you something to do.

But There are So Many Blogs Out There

There's an oft-quoted statistic that "a blog is created every 10 seconds" or whatever the fuck. It's stupid "conventional wisdom" and utterly inconsequential. How many of those blogs created ever publish 5 posts, or even 2 for that matter? Let's not even talk about spam blogs, i.e. splogs.

And writing on a blog is only 50% of blogging; the other 50% is networking. You can blog in a vacuum, but you won't make it past 10 posts.

Blog Ideas

While there's plenty of lifehacking student blogs out there these days, there are a few relevant student blogs that have yet to be invented. Here's a quick list of blogs that haven't been done (well) yet:

• Student Business Blogs. There are a few in existence, but none of them really whet our appetite.


• Art Blogs. Where are they? We need some creative influence


• et al. The family should be huge!

Pick an idea and start writing today. Your knowledge should be far enough to get you writing your first post, sans code.

Fellow Student Bloggers

Best of all, you can start off with friends. There's already a family waiting to accept you with open arms. They include:

• AJ Vaynerchuk at AJ Vaynerchuk at social marketing, twitter, and web design


• Chris at college being


• The guys at College Drinker


• Briana at College Fashion .Net


• The blokes at Gearfire


• Paul from PaulStamatiou.com


• Sean from SeanBlanda.com


• Stephanie from Poorer than You


• Cal from Cal Newport's Study Hacks


• Gideon from Mindful Ink


• David from david giesberg dot com


• Alex from Student Bloggers


• Andy from his blog


• Alan from ASU's geek stew

Note: I know I'm missing a ton of folks. Email us if you would like to be included in the list.

Check back tomorrow for our post "Getting Started with Wordpress."

Comments

[David Giesberg]

Blogging is a great way to get chicks!

There are also a bunch of great 20-something bloggers (some students, some not) at http://brazencareerist.com

[Dave Lester]

Great post guys, and it's nice to see a shout out to my friend Stephanie at Poorer Than You.

As a question for you -- do any of you have multiple blogs on different topics? The blogs you linked to were pretty topic-specific. What if I have two (or three!) things I'd like to write about? Should they become separate blogs, or one giant blog? Thoughts?

[mike@studenthacks.org]

Blogging takes a time commitment, but it's definitely rewarding and enjoyable.

[Casper ter Kuile]

Hey guys,

Well you've got me going!

I'm going to the Arctic with WWF in June to learn about Climate Change Communication - and I'm blogging about the whole thing (and general environment stuff)!

Thanks for the inspiration!

Casper

www.caspersarcticvoyage.wordpress.com

[Spenser]

You guys are great! Student blogging is a great place to just get stuff out there, my idea is to just kind of do a 'lifehacks' thing, but just life in general and how you can make it better. It's hard for me to be really disciplined in it, since I can't even discipline myself with classes.

lifeisculture.wordpress.com

[Michael | University Scholar]

I am starting a bloggers club at school. And the first thing I say to people is "blogging is not about political gossip or people spamming their emotions." Most people do not realize that the majority of informational websites they visit are blogs.

I bet that most people that actually subscribe to blogs have blogged before, or are at least very familiar with blogs. The average person has no clue what a blog is.

@Dave,

You can have more than one blog. It is better to have three blogs with different topics than one blog with three topics. However, the more blogs you have the more effort, commitment, and time you will have to give to blogging. I actually will have 4 blogs by the end of the summer.

[rare hero]

Great suggestion!
I graduate in a week, so I don't know if I'd qualify as a student blogger anymore, but I started as a student!

[Kelly Sutton]

Amazing comments everybody. Keep 'em coming!

[Joey]

Totally agree. I blog about film school.

coffeeandcelluloid.com

[Alan Bradford]

Giddy up.

Thanks for the kick in the pants Kelly, and thanks for the linky link.

Now go study for finals!

[Why Students Should Blog - A F]

[...] Students Should Blog - A Few Pointers Hack College posted an article on the Case for Student Blogging and @KellySutton posted the same question on Twitter as part as a competition to win a Hack College [...]

[John Peden]

"Student Business Blogs. There are a few in existence, but none of them really whet our appetite."

After reading this post I looked over previous posts on my 'Student Business' blog and realised that I had been blogging about very general entrepreneurial topics.

I think its critical to make your blog as specific as possible; if everyone is your audience, then nobody is your audience.

[Kelvin]

I think it is a very nice idea that there is a series on and about student bloggers. I don't find many posts or articles of the related.

[Why I Blog | University Schola]

[...] at HackCollege the guys are doing a Student Blogging series in attempt to convince more students to start blogging, [...]

[John Peden]

Referenced in my latest post.

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