So, you're about to leave the country for a semester or two, and you're considering keeping a study abroad blog. Should you put in all that extra effort?
My answer is a very enthusiastic yes!
Reasons you should keep a blog during your experience:
1. Your friends and family will miss you. Seriously, they will. And it gets difficult to keep in touch with your entire network when you're immersed in a new experience. Of course, you should send lots of postcards and remember to call your parents, but when CALL MOM is on your to-do list for three weeks straight, she'll be really relieved to see your weekly posts.
2. It keeps your travel memories in one place. When you organize your memories for other people to read, they're also there for you to read! It forces you to go through which photos to keep and which to delete, and which memories you want t
3. It's super helpful for scholarships. A lot of scholarship donors want to see what their recipients are doing. Even if they don't require some kind of correspondence (many do), it is polite to send them something that shows their money is not going to waste.
4. It's good practice. Social media writing/copywriting is a valuable skill in 2017. If you can use your blog as a writing sample, that's great. If you can't, every post you draft is practice for a writing sample you may need to produce later in your career search.
5. It's reflection time! Reflecting on your experience is invaluable to enriching it. If you think about what you are doing and what you want out of your experience, you'll inevitably get more out of it.
Things to Consider:
Ok, so I've convinced you. Now it's your turn to think about what you want your blog to be during your time abroad...
1. What should I use to host my blog? This is an important practical question that I wish I considered before creating my blog. Blogger is a useful tool, but it's also attached to your personal google account for as long as you want to keep the blog active, which can get frustrating when you want to control your name under google search. Blogger also forwards your posts to your Google+ stream, so it looks like all you do is study abroad if you don't use Google+ as a social media platform regularly.
For someone else's professional opinion on where to host your blog, click here.
2. Who is my audience? If you publish your blog on the good old world wide web, the entire world could be your audience. Of course, you may not get more than 14 views total in the span of five years, but anyone can see your blog if it's public. Keep this in mind when you decide which pictures to post and the tone you want to use when you write. Your blog is not a journal - it is absolutely O.K. to include how you're feeling, but use a paper journal for the really deep stuff.
3. What should I include on my blog? You want to think about what to include in your blog before you start writing, not only because of who might see it, but also for your own benefit. If you know what you want to include in your blog, you'll take more pictures and maybe a few notes when something happens you know you want to write about.
It will also help jog you're brain when you're having writer's block. Don't be afraid to include a little private research - for example, if you go on a tour of a castle, include some history about it. (It's ok to use Wikipedia for this kind of thing).
Some ideas of what to include: foods you eat (recipes if you learn them), holidays unique to your host country, places you travel within your host country (excursions), people you meet (do not post pictures of your friends online without their permission! generally a good practice), wildlife you encounter, museum tours/other tourist attractions you visit, your progress with language learning, things that you notice are different from your home country
Pro-Tips:
1. Add lots of pictures. People love pictures! That being said, they also don't read really long chunks of information.
2. Use listicles. It's 2017, people love listicles. And often, they're all people have the attention span for anyways.
3. Schedule your posts. You will absolutely have weeks where you are swamped with work or potentially in another country on a weekend outing. When those weeks arrive, you'll be thrilled you already have your 2-3 posts per week being published automatically. You don't have to write your whole blog at once (that would defeat the purpose), but when you write one post, try to push 1-2 more posts and schedule them for later that month.
3. Put "update blog" on your to-do list along with your homework. It's very important to be consistent with your blogging. This is a great example of something I wish I did and am adding retrospectively - when you add your blog posts to your homework, it helps keep you on track. If you need something to motivate you to blog, remember that if your blog is only a few posts, it's sort of an unfinished product. You want to be able to use your blog in the future!
4. Do NOT point out your own inactivity. Ok, maybe it has been one of those weeks I mentioned above. Whatever you do, do not start your post off with "sorry it's been so long since my last post." A lot of people reading your blog won't be reading it in real time, and it just makes you look bad. If you feel a really strong urge to apologize, channel that energy into writing about what you were doing instead of apologizing for the fact that it wasn't blogging.
5. Use social media to advertise your blog. The more readers the better! When you publish a post, consider posting to facebook or twitter. If you feel your post is professional grade, you can also post it to your LinkedIn.
6. Contact your international programs office. Blogs are really helpful for inspiring prospective students, and your adviser might want to follow along as well. Don't forget about them!
1. Your friends and family will miss you. Seriously, they will. And it gets difficult to keep in touch with your entire network when you're immersed in a new experience. Of course, you should send lots of postcards and remember to call your parents, but when CALL MOM is on your to-do list for three weeks straight, she'll be really relieved to see your weekly posts.
2. It keeps your travel memories in one place. When you organize your memories for other people to read, they're also there for you to read! It forces you to go through which photos to keep and which to delete, and which memories you want t
3. It's super helpful for scholarships. A lot of scholarship donors want to see what their recipients are doing. Even if they don't require some kind of correspondence (many do), it is polite to send them something that shows their money is not going to waste.
4. It's good practice. Social media writing/copywriting is a valuable skill in 2017. If you can use your blog as a writing sample, that's great. If you can't, every post you draft is practice for a writing sample you may need to produce later in your career search.
5. It's reflection time! Reflecting on your experience is invaluable to enriching it. If you think about what you are doing and what you want out of your experience, you'll inevitably get more out of it.
Things to Consider:
Ok, so I've convinced you. Now it's your turn to think about what you want your blog to be during your time abroad...
1. What should I use to host my blog? This is an important practical question that I wish I considered before creating my blog. Blogger is a useful tool, but it's also attached to your personal google account for as long as you want to keep the blog active, which can get frustrating when you want to control your name under google search. Blogger also forwards your posts to your Google+ stream, so it looks like all you do is study abroad if you don't use Google+ as a social media platform regularly.
For someone else's professional opinion on where to host your blog, click here.
2. Who is my audience? If you publish your blog on the good old world wide web, the entire world could be your audience. Of course, you may not get more than 14 views total in the span of five years, but anyone can see your blog if it's public. Keep this in mind when you decide which pictures to post and the tone you want to use when you write. Your blog is not a journal - it is absolutely O.K. to include how you're feeling, but use a paper journal for the really deep stuff.
3. What should I include on my blog? You want to think about what to include in your blog before you start writing, not only because of who might see it, but also for your own benefit. If you know what you want to include in your blog, you'll take more pictures and maybe a few notes when something happens you know you want to write about.
It will also help jog you're brain when you're having writer's block. Don't be afraid to include a little private research - for example, if you go on a tour of a castle, include some history about it. (It's ok to use Wikipedia for this kind of thing).
Some ideas of what to include: foods you eat (recipes if you learn them), holidays unique to your host country, places you travel within your host country (excursions), people you meet (do not post pictures of your friends online without their permission! generally a good practice), wildlife you encounter, museum tours/other tourist attractions you visit, your progress with language learning, things that you notice are different from your home country
Pro-Tips:
1. Add lots of pictures. People love pictures! That being said, they also don't read really long chunks of information.
2. Use listicles. It's 2017, people love listicles. And often, they're all people have the attention span for anyways.
3. Schedule your posts. You will absolutely have weeks where you are swamped with work or potentially in another country on a weekend outing. When those weeks arrive, you'll be thrilled you already have your 2-3 posts per week being published automatically. You don't have to write your whole blog at once (that would defeat the purpose), but when you write one post, try to push 1-2 more posts and schedule them for later that month.
3. Put "update blog" on your to-do list along with your homework. It's very important to be consistent with your blogging. This is a great example of something I wish I did and am adding retrospectively - when you add your blog posts to your homework, it helps keep you on track. If you need something to motivate you to blog, remember that if your blog is only a few posts, it's sort of an unfinished product. You want to be able to use your blog in the future!
4. Do NOT point out your own inactivity. Ok, maybe it has been one of those weeks I mentioned above. Whatever you do, do not start your post off with "sorry it's been so long since my last post." A lot of people reading your blog won't be reading it in real time, and it just makes you look bad. If you feel a really strong urge to apologize, channel that energy into writing about what you were doing instead of apologizing for the fact that it wasn't blogging.
5. Use social media to advertise your blog. The more readers the better! When you publish a post, consider posting to facebook or twitter. If you feel your post is professional grade, you can also post it to your LinkedIn.
6. Contact your international programs office. Blogs are really helpful for inspiring prospective students, and your adviser might want to follow along as well. Don't forget about them!
