Thanks for posting this, this is really helpful to me!
I don’t currently have a blog (well, I do, but not at all related to EA), so unfortunately I can’t answer your first three closing questions. However I’ve been planning on starting an EA blog for the last month or so and have been thinking about some of this stuff – particularly about just having my own blog vs. just posting to the forum vs. occasional cross-posting – so reading your thoughts from your place of much more experience was useful, thank you.
Are you considering exporting your posts to the EA Forum, why or why not?
Here goes in the hope of any slight value my answer might have, and because I’d be interested to know what others think, although it’s probably only relevant for those like me who are just starting out producing online content.
My current plan is to go ahead with making a personal blog, and then, if I feel up to it, cross-post things that I feel are particularly suitable. Your considerations about the career/​image benefit, and being able to have a unified theme and all of my ideas in one place with its own identity, are definitely important reasons why I think this.
Another reason, though, and I’m not sure how much I feel like this is legitimate, is that a blog will have a lot less of a personal barrier to posting. Like I know that the Forum definitely encourages people to post relevant content however unpolished it is, but I also know that if I try to do forum posts only, then I will post a whole lot less frequently because, even though I know I shouldn’t be, I’ll be worrying about it not being good enough. And although one of the purposes of starting to write is for the results of others reading it (i.e. being able to discuss my ideas, present them more widely, if they end up being valuable then influence the thinking of others etc.), another purpose is for me to be able to practice writing and thinking and researching – so anything that makes me do that less will be less productive? And having a blog helps me produce content, I can always post it or a derivative to the Forum later once I feel more confident about it. But yes, I’m very uncertain on whether that is at all a good reason.
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On a separate thing, when you are considering exporting your posts, you mean moving your previous posts to the Forum, yes? I’d be interested to know, do you think that the arguments in favour of (or against) that are in any way different compared to when people are considering where to post new content? Just thinking that I’ve seen in several places that people are in favour of cross-posting content to the Forum from blogs, and linking to interesting content elsewhere, but I’ve not seen discussion of whether it might be valuable for existing content producers to post their previous content on the Forum, although some of the same arguments in favour might apply. I suppose if people started doing that too frequently, then new content might get lost among it all?
Thanks for posting this, this is really helpful to me!
I don’t currently have a blog (well, I do, but not at all related to EA), so unfortunately I can’t answer your first three closing questions. However I’ve been planning on starting an EA blog for the last month or so and have been thinking about some of this stuff – particularly about just having my own blog vs. just posting to the forum vs. occasional cross-posting – so reading your thoughts from your place of much more experience was useful, thank you.
Here goes in the hope of any slight value my answer might have, and because I’d be interested to know what others think, although it’s probably only relevant for those like me who are just starting out producing online content.
My current plan is to go ahead with making a personal blog, and then, if I feel up to it, cross-post things that I feel are particularly suitable. Your considerations about the career/​image benefit, and being able to have a unified theme and all of my ideas in one place with its own identity, are definitely important reasons why I think this.
Another reason, though, and I’m not sure how much I feel like this is legitimate, is that a blog will have a lot less of a personal barrier to posting. Like I know that the Forum definitely encourages people to post relevant content however unpolished it is, but I also know that if I try to do forum posts only, then I will post a whole lot less frequently because, even though I know I shouldn’t be, I’ll be worrying about it not being good enough. And although one of the purposes of starting to write is for the results of others reading it (i.e. being able to discuss my ideas, present them more widely, if they end up being valuable then influence the thinking of others etc.), another purpose is for me to be able to practice writing and thinking and researching – so anything that makes me do that less will be less productive? And having a blog helps me produce content, I can always post it or a derivative to the Forum later once I feel more confident about it. But yes, I’m very uncertain on whether that is at all a good reason.
--
On a separate thing, when you are considering exporting your posts, you mean moving your previous posts to the Forum, yes? I’d be interested to know, do you think that the arguments in favour of (or against) that are in any way different compared to when people are considering where to post new content? Just thinking that I’ve seen in several places that people are in favour of cross-posting content to the Forum from blogs, and linking to interesting content elsewhere, but I’ve not seen discussion of whether it might be valuable for existing content producers to post their previous content on the Forum, although some of the same arguments in favour might apply. I suppose if people started doing that too frequently, then new content might get lost among it all?