—–
MM wrote:
Hi Marquis!
I wanted to ask you your opinion about blogging. I’m thinking about starting a blog which discusses issues in education. I really want to become a leader in ed reform, and writing a blog could be a way to increase my visibility while establishing my stance on education. It may come in handy in the future when I want to make bigger moves. Any tips?
MM
—–
My response:
Hi MM,
I might be the wrong person to ask for an impartial opinion on blogging because I’m a huge fan of it as a way of expressing one’s opinions and insights. In fact, when I started my own blog back in October 2003, I was one of the first crop of MBA bloggers and I’ve been doing it ever since. Over the years, I’ve picked up a pretty solid following and have been able to connect with hundreds of my readers around the world (either via email, over the phone, or in person).
If you’re going to start blogging yourself, there are a few issues to consider:
- To be anonymous or not: Some people who blog do so anonymously because they feel that it gives them more freedom to say whatever they want. Others do so using their real identities as a way to share their opinions and to build a brand of sorts for themselves based on those opinions. There are pluses and minuses to both approaches, but, based on what you’re choosing to write about, I get a sense that you’re going to go with the latter. If so, make sure you’re totally cool with people all over the world potentially being able to read your thoughts.
- Taking the good with the bad: As one grows in popularity as a blogger, he/she can start to get some good acclaim from his/her postings. In some instances, some really harsh feedback or reactions can come in and throw the blogger for a loop. When I was at the GSB, I shared damn near everything that I was experiencing and, at first, I received really positive feedback from readers for my openness. Then, when I started having trouble finding an MBA summer internship and wrote about it, I began to receive some incredibly cruel emails from random strangers and I totally wasn’t ready for that sort of thing. As you start to share your thoughts, be ready for the possibility of tough feedback and sometimes downright mean comments coming in from people who read your posts.
- Anything posted on the Web is truly out there to be seen: When you post an entry to your blog, you’ve got to know that it will be seen and the people who see it may form opinions about you based on it. When I was blogging as a student, I had no idea that school admissions teams and company recruiters might see what I was writing and I was basically writing whatever came into my head. I eventually realized the mistake in that when the things I wrote starting coming back to bite me later on. If you decide to start blogging, think about the risk involved with people being able to see your opinions over time and making judgments about you based on them.
- Make sure that you’ve got enough content/ideas to share: Once you’ve developed a following, your readers will want to see something from you regularly. If your production of content starts to fall off, your readers may either start hitting you up for more or may choose to just stop following your entries altogether. Since you’re planning to share your opinions on education and want to have a career in your space, I think you’d want to build and maintain as strong a following as possible, so be ready to make that happen.
If you do choose to start doing it, I wish you the best of luck with it. As someone who shared his journey from an MBA applicant on through life as an MBA student and then onward to becoming an MBA grad and alum, I can attest that it can be a truly rewarding and therapeutic outlet, but it can also be terrifying at times to put yourself out there. Make sure that you’re ready for both the good and the bad if you choose to do it.
Marquis
You must be logged in to post a comment.