Wrote every blogger ever, “It’s been a while since I posted something here.” I have always avoided starting a blog post that way because it’s basically a social media dead-end. Put another way, as the dated cliché goes, “if you don’t have something to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I was thinking about this recently as I wrote up guidelines for my arts entrepreneurship graduate students who will be blogging their experience in the course. Why would I require them to do this? Blogging will help them build public communication skills and reflect critically on their work and that of their classmates in an intentional way. For some, it will build technical skills related to working with a new social media platform. The blog can even be a platform for marketing the arts-based venture they will be launching as part of the course.

More than anything, blogging is and requires discipline; the exercise will help them build a content creation “habit.” As I wrote to my students in their instructions,  “Form and grammar are very important, but content is Queen!” I really admire people who are able to post meaningful content every day – although I note that daily bloggers often post content derived, aggregated, or in reaction to original content created by others.

So, yes, perhaps you’ve noticed, “It’s been a while since I posted something here.” It’s not for lack of something to say – but rather lack of something to say here.

To my academic colleagues, I say this: Have a terrific fall semester – may we and our students have something original to say!

[Image: Der Liebesbrief, Adolf Holzel; public domain]