VOF 3 (OVERCOMING THE BLOGGING HURDLES)

Blogging has been a wonderful experience for me. I was introduced to blogging a few years back after taking an online journalism course that opened my eyes to the possibility of citizen journalism. I then went on and established two blogs. Since then I had unlimited access to internet, I would check my blog after every few minutes to see if anyone left comments.

But what I didn’t realize was that I had to share out my blog address for people to access it, read and leave comment. For days I waited, and it was until I complained to a more technology savvy friend that I received no comments on my blog that she “enlightened” me to share the address with other. I was embarrassed to say the least.

Blogs are the easiest forms of personal space to start on the internet and you can have as many blogs as possible depending on how creative you are. Since there is no pressure of beating deadlines and how frequently you should write, there is a big chance of lagging behind in updating your content. I started with three blogs but currently I update only one. This is clearly something am struggling with even at the moment. The only way to counter this challenge is to maintain one blog where you can share different ideas and opinions and therefore no need to divide your time.

In this weeks note, I read saw something that I found useful, the use of visuals in blogs. Most blogs I visit have very little visual content. Normally they contain the bloggers picture and that’s it. I have never really used visuals in my blogs. Maybe because I have never thought of that possibility but now I know of this possibility.

When I started blogging, readers would tell me that sometimes my posts are too long. Sometimes I wonder if this is a valid comment. However it could be, for me a big challenge is how long should a blog post be? Sometime I just want to write and write because this is my personal space to share my ideas and opinions but if I do this I run the risk of putting off some of my readers. What I have come to realize is that as much a blog is my personal page, it still has an audience and the rules of journalisms of Keeping It Short and Simple (KISS) still applies. I am working on being less wordy.

Internet access in my part of the world (Eastern Africa) is still not very efficient, and connectivity can be a big problem and to access relatively quick connection you have to part with some money. This is a big challenge for many internet users in my part of the world though the situation is slowly changing. T o be cost effective its better to type in blogs while offline then upload then on the page, this means that you spend less time on the net.