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What kind of blogger will you be?

Catalogs, journeys, civic blogs, and more

What kind of blog do you want? Consider these five types.

A drawer from a card catalog, with cards A hand holding a fanciful set of gears set against the sky
A drawing of an unfolded map with a route marked across it A woman stands to address a meeting
An old photo of newspaper boys standing in the street front of a newspaper office

Catalog blogs
Rating and sharing
Tutorial blogs
Teaching and showing

Journey blogs
A story in time

Civic blogs
Engaging in an issue
A focused news beat

There are other possibilities, of course.

So many posts from so many blogs (including this blog) are about the mechanics of blogging.

All well and good.

But beyond mere technique, it is enormously helpful to know what your blog is about. To have a vision for the project.

To know to what ends you will apply the too-clever technical stuff.

So even if your vision is not one of these (catalog, civic, journey, tutorial, aggregator), I encourage you to think about your blogging project in general terms.

Your writing will be surer and better for it.

Other Types of Blogs

Of course there are others, and many blogs that do not fit neatly into just one of these four boxes.

You might combine several forms.

Every blog has a journey in it someplace, if it exists over time.

Nonetheless, if you are thinking about a direction for you blog, you could do worse than to see if one of these is a good fit.

I hope you find a good idea or two.


catalog • civic • journey • tutorial • news aggregator

Comments

  1. This is a great post, as are the linked posts on the specific blog types. Both of my blogs slop over multiple categories but this has helped me look at them a little more critically.

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  2. Replies
    1. Thanks, Santosh (and Barbara, above). This is actually the sort of topic I really like to write about: not so much those tweaks and tricks, but strategic thinking about goals and purpose.

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