The Most Important Stories … Aren’t the Ones I’m Writing
I was talking with a colleague the other day about how to increase the number of hits per article on our organization’s technology website. We get about 800 hits per article, which isn’t much given the potential audience.
To increase hits, I said we need to send these articles to all users via a newsletter. Email is the only way to reach a lot of people. People aren’t subscribing to RSS anymore. On my own blog, I can’t seem to go beyond 3,500 subscribers on my site. I feel I’ve hit the ceiling. Probably because RSS subscriptions just end up being a bunch of random noise after a while.
My colleague said, yeah, and blogging is dead.
This caught me a little by surprise, since he knows I’m a blogger. Why do you think so? I asked.
He quickly distinguished between professional blogs and personal blogs, and said he was referring to personal blogs. Very few personal bloggers can command large audiences, he said. Dooce is one of them. We couldn’t think of many more.
I didn’t think much of this conversation until later in the evening, talking with my kids. For some reason I started telling my six-year-old some stories about different experiences I’ve had in life. Then we started talking about the past, and how her older sister was eight months old when 9/11 happened (we were in New York). I told her the story of how I got my job in Egypt, after waiting two and a half months after the interview. I told her the story of drug dealers shooting into our house in Florida, and why we came to Utah. I told her the story of how I miraculously fixed the lawnmower last week, and how I unscrewed an impossible drain. She looked at me with both curiosity and seriousness. She hadn’t heard many of these stories before.
And then it hit me. I haven’t written the most important stories of my life. This blog, this professional blog, only tells one kind of story. It tells the story of my professional life, of my thoughts surrounding my career and all the issues involved in it.
As long as you have the same career, you share some commonality with me and may find the content relevant. But there’s a certain sadness about this blog and all professional blogs, as they distract from the time we might spend telling stories that matter more in our lives.
I do have a personal blog, but it doesn’t receive the attention and care of my professional blog. My writing is sloppy and unstructured, almost stream of conscious. It’s hard to find motivation, for some reason, to write the real stories of my life.
Partly, I see so many tangible rewards for a professional blog. Immediate praise and engagement, career leverage, networking, career advancement, professional reputation — all of this increases with each good post on my professional blog.
With the personal blog, there isn’t the same reward. A reward exists for sure, but it’s a different kind of reward. It’s the same reward you receive for keeping a personal journal.
For now, I am resigned in having two blogs. One is my more historical, unadvertised blog where I write the personal stories of my life. The other, this blog, is where I explore topics related to technical writing.
Regardless of the blog, I will always try to write the real stories.
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I completely understand what you mean. This is why I love scrapbooking, and personal blogs are much the same – it’s the storytelling that’s important to me, not so much the crafty side of pictures (though it’s fun, but I’m not a really great visual design person; my albums will definitely have journalling but maybe not many decorative elements with the photos).
I think that people are deep, and complex, and sometimes our online personas can be of only a single dimension – work, political thoughts, family thoughts – but our lives are so much more than that. I’ve noticed a few friends on Facebook or twitter having multiple accounts to keep work and personal separate for example. This is absolutely their choice, but I feel if I separate my tech comm/manager/localisation interests from being a mum, a scrapbooker, reader, enthusiastic food eater and occasional cook, then I’m only being part of me. Sometimes I do wonder when I post thoughts or retweet in social media how some of my friends and followers will react to a political or religious thought; on some occasions I choose not to RT or post that thought, but generally I override that thought with “This is how I feel, this is my belief, if I respect the rights of others to share their differing opinions, then surely I can share mine?”.
Some of the storytelling is really being brought home to my family right now – my husband’s 93 year old great-Aunt died in early April. Her husband died a few years ago, and they had never had children. My FIL and MIL would check on her at least weekly, and do her shopping (she was legally blind; easily able to get around her house, but not around big shopping centres). My FIL has been spending time cleaning up the house, organising things, contacting relatives, etc. He’s brought home all of his aunt’s photos; photos are important to him. When he told me the other night that many of the photos have nothing written on the back of them, so we don’t know anything about them, I said they should be thrown out. I might as well have slapped him. Of course, it isn’t a nice thing to say, but I meant just that if we know nothing about them, we are holding on to them just because they are his aunt’s. That might be a valuable enough reason to hold on to them. But there’s another part of me that can see me and my husband and his sisters, hopefully in 20++ years, finding these photos amid all of my FIL’s photos after he dies, and being no clearer on the stories. As they already are, they will continue to be lost with time, and holding those photos will not create memories that we never had.
Kirsty, thanks for commenting. I can imagine that after your recent floods, you are more apt to hang on to photos and stories with more care. You’re definitely right that when we brand ourselves, we come across as having online personas of a single dimension. That’s the general advice we always receive, right? Pick a focus, find a niche, and stick with it. That’s one way that people can sort out the noise, because no one likes to subscribe to a site with topics that are unpredictable. But it also has some unfortunate consequences. It can make bloggers feel trapped in that persona. Hmm, this is an interesting topic I’ll have to reflect more on.
This really hit home for me. Fairly late in my college career, I realized that stories were what held my attention the most. I became a writer because of the stories that need telling, and even in technical writing, stories need to be told. To me, all communication is about conveying stories, conveying experiences. Whether it’s to instruct or entertain, stories provide more of the backbone of society than I think a lot of people realize.
Have you seen the Story Corps site? It’s great, especially the little animations for some of the recordings. Storycorps.org, if you’re interested.
Hi Heidi, thanks for commenting on my post. Also, congrats on the position you recently began. Too bad you’re not located more closely to the rest of us.
Reading your comment, I feel I’ve had the same experience. I had this exact same epiphany about why I was an English major — what I liked most was the stories. I think if you continue with this guiding principle, it will help you structure everything you write in a perfect way. I did write a post about finding the story in tech comm topics, but it’s still a hard idea to implement.
I have listened to Story Corps — an excellent podcast. I also like This American Life and Radiolab (though recently I downloaded Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander and am listening to that.)
Hi Tim,
This post really resonated with me. Ever since I attended your blog workshop at STC, I have been struggling with the decision to blog or not to blog. The topic I want to blog about is fairly personal, stories about a particular dog breed. While I love writing the stories in my own personal journal, I wonder if it is worth the time and money to get a hosting service and “publicize” the stories. The other day, my friend remarked “If it takes 10 hours a week to blog, do you want to spend that time writing about dogs or being with dogs?” I can count several reasons why a blog of this nature could be useful to new dog owners, and to owners of this particular breed, but perhaps the Yahoo groups are sufficiently serving those purposes.
Blogs started out as personal outlets; they have now become professional avenues. I think there is still a need for more personal blogs (not just diaries), but the audiences are very small and the payoff is almost nothing. Maybe we need a different tool, but for now, the blog still fills a void. So, we come back to the question of motivation. Why write the personal blog? In your case, if you are providing family information that will be valuable to filling in the family tree and leaving a legacy for the next few generations, it is still very much worth while to continue your blog. Your personal “fame” may come after you leave this earth, but someone will be very grateful that you left those notes.
Eileen
Eileen, I think writing serves another purpose as well, beyond merely communicating information. A blog (whether personal or professional) gives you a place to explore and advance your thoughts. A good post usually changes how I think about things. So the time you spend blogging about whatever topic, dogs, tech writing, weather forecasting, etc., it will change how you approach these topics in real life.
Tom, you make me feel much better about the sorry state of my professional blog, and the time I put into my two personal blogs. We both need to find some balance. ;^)
Carol, thanks for commenting. Wow, you have not one but two personal blogs. I almost want to start up a fiction blog too, but that would really be spreading myself too thin.
Tom
You are spot on and I too have my personal blog to share my *Life Stories* that I cannot share on my professional blog. For example, I published a few memoirs about my father, in a small 32-page ebook and I could not talk about it at my professional blog. So, its details are at my personal blog.
As a policy, I always tell my my fellow technical writers that we are *always* individuals and humans first, and professional later. For example, I cannot force my associate to write instructions because today is a deadline, if her father is sick. Of course, she should leave for thee day when she needs to leave.
Having a personal blog gives us the required *balance* in life, to write what we are as humans and not only as technical writers.
Vinish, thanks for your comment. I like your policy of being human first and a professional later. Sometimes when I post off-topic, people are surprised that I have interests outside of technical writing. That’s no doubt the result of the narrowly defined niche and branding.
As many blogs as I read, I don’t feel like blogging is dead at all, though most of what I read are blogs focused on particular interests. I don’t know if a dog training or gardening or food blog is really more personal or more professional. It kind of sits on the line between the two.
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Tom, you make me feel much better about the sorry state of my professional blog, and the time I put into my two personal blogs. We both need to find some balance.