Blogging nowadays

When I started blogging in 2009, blogging was popular. Nowadays, blogs are perhaps past their peak, and have to share space with various other outlets and social media platforms. Moreover, the text format is now just one way of sending contents into the world, with audio and video out there as well.

So, what’s the point of blogging nowadays?

I’m still here and still blogging. And if you are thinking about starting a blog, you could consider the following reasons:

1. More permanent record: Contents on Twitter and other social media platforms gets diluted quickly. It’s easier to navigate blog archives than it is to navigate social media archives. As such, a blog is a better venue to have a permanent record of your contents. If there are topics you repeatedly touch upon, such as planning, weekly templates, and goals, you can see as well how your methods and goals have changed over time.
2. Writing practice: For academics, blogging is great practice for writing in a clear and concise way. You could say that tweeting requires even more brevity – but I guess a tweet can hardly be considered a writing effort. An academic blog can be the right space for practicing writing for a broader audience.
3. Space for fleshing out ideas: I use my blog for fleshing out ideas that are not fully developed yet, and I’ve used it as a space to develop my thinking (and the input from others) around a certain topic. For example, I’ve collected various testimonies about the doctoral defense over the past years, and combined with writing about my experience and tips, this work ultimately led to a book on the topic of the defense and research articles on this topic.
4. Potential combination with other formats: When you start a blog, it doesn’t mean you can’t use audio or video format as well. You can embed podcast episodes and videos, and use various modes of information on your blog. As you know, I also have a podcast, and while I don’t embed podcast episodes on my blog every time, I do write about my podcasting experiences.
5. Building an online profile: Blogging is still one of the best ways to establish yourself as a scholar to a broader public. Making your research more accessible online, providing information on the behind-the-scenes of your research, and adding personal reflections of your research journey can be excellent ways to give a more multidimensional perspective of your research to the world.

Are you (still) blogging? What keeps you going? What are the benefits you have observed?