Manu Saunders, School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England

Blogging, once considered just a pastime for food-lovers and travellers, is now a reputable genre for professional communication and academic discourse. Blog posts are also becoming increasingly acceptable as citable sources in peer-reviewed papers. For researchers of any career stage, blogging has many benefits, including improving writing skills, networking and collaboration, and reaching non-academic audiences.

However, blogging is also a commitment and may not work for everyone. Just like journals, a blog’s content needs to be regular and consistent to attract and engage an audience. If you’re thinking about starting a blog, there are a few things to consider if you want to get the most out of the experience.

I started blogging 10 years ago, just before I embarked on my PhD. When I published my first post, I had no strategy other than to write. At this stage, I didn’t even know if I was going to have an academic career. I just wanted a creative outlet to craft my own writing style, and help me deal with the often-restrictive styles of academic writing.

It took me about six months to write my first post. In that time, I weighed up the pros and cons of blogging. At the time, academic blogs were not really ‘a thing’, and most of the ecology-focused ones were from northern hemisphere academic voices. Eventually I gave up thinking and posted my first blog, a popular science perspective about why we need more renewable energy sources, which was a topical issue at the time (nothing’s changed!).

My blog has evolved with my career. Because I’d come to science from journalism and corporate communications, I started my blog for a science communication audience—I wanted an outlet to write about environmental issues for general audiences. As my research career grew, I found myself writing more about my own research and academic issues, like peer review, ethics, and problems faced by early career researchers.

Knowing your audience is key to maintaining a good blog. It makes it easier to write when you think about who will be reading it. My audience is a mix of other academics and general readers interested in nature and ecology, so my blog posts cover a mix of academic issues and general science communication. I have a few wonderful loyal readers who like or comment on nearly every post! But in most cases, I notice two distinct audience groups that engage with different sets of posts.

Blogs should be informal and conversational, which makes them easier to write than an academic paper. Regardless of which audience group you aim for, it’s important to remember that anyone may find your post. Writing for general audiences, even on complex issues, can help increase readership and new followers. It also makes great practice for explaining complexity in short and simple texts. Brevity is a critical attribute for any blog post—nothing more than 1,000 words, shorter is better. If you do need to write a longer post on an important issue, try and break it up with sub-headings, sections of dot points, and figures, or consider posting as a series of shorter posts.

If you decide that writing a blog is not for you, I still strongly recommend joining the blogosphere community as a reader. Following academic blogs within and beyond your discipline is an excellent way to engage with the academic community outside your department and keep abreast of new ideas and important discussions. For researchers who feel isolated, or aren’t always sure who to talk to about personal issues affecting their career, blogs can be a valuable source of mentorship and advice.

For further information, take a look at Manu’s Blog ¤

Read the rest of the September 2019 ESA Bulletin.