“Seated Woman Blogging, after Albert Reuss” by Mike Licht, CC BY 2.0 on Flickr.

I was supposed to be running a workshop on blogging for my Digital Skills, Design and Training colleagues this week.  For various reasons, that won’t be happening but I wanted to collate some of the links I’d planned to share so I don’t loose them and in case they’re useful for others. 

As the social media landscape has become more and more toxic and fragmented, people are increasingly seeking other channels to share their ideas and practice, connect with their peers, and build community.  As a result, there’s been a welcome resurgence in blogging, newsletters and small-scale podcasting over the last year or so.  These forms of communication are less tied to specific social media platforms, giving creators more control over their work and who they share it with.  At times like these it’s been really encouraging to see familiar communities and independent voices reemerging across the web.  So if you’re new to blogging, or if you just need a boost to get started again, here’s some resources that might help.

Reclaim Hosting Blogging Community of Practice. An informal community of practice for academic bloggers. 

“Now, we believe academic blogging is not just for the holidays or indeed the odd conference, but for life (#4life), and that is why we are setting out to support a new community of practice for all education bloggers out there looking for a bit of support and motivation along the way.”

The community has a Discord server that aims to:

• share blogging tips and inspiration via the channel;
• collate open resources and contribute our own;
• organise monthly live sessions with guest presenters;
• encourage everyone to share blog posts, what works for their blogging practice or what is stopping them from blogging.

(Blogging) Challenge Accepted by Maren Deepwell. A lovely post by Maren about what inspires her to blog.

You should get a blog by Hugh Rundel. A brilliant post that answers almost every conceivable question you could ask about blogging. `

CPD Webinar Series 2025: Thinking about blogging? 22 April 12.30 – 13.30. This webinar, led by members of the #altc blog team, will provide some practical guidance on getting started with blogging. 

Blogging About Blogging by Alan Levine.  Many wise words about blogging from one of the best bloggers out there. 

From the archives

Have No Fear: Learning to love your blog. I wrote this blog post years ago to address some of the common fears and anxieties about blogging.  It was quite popular at the time and I think it’s still really useful. 

Blogging to Build your Professional Profile. These are the resources for an old digital skills workshop I used to run on academic blogging.  All the links are way out of date but some of the content, particularly around benefits of blogging, privacy, openness and licensing, and writing for blogs, is still pretty relevant.

And lastly…

I want to finish with this lovely quote from Alan Levine, which perfectly captures what I think is so important about blogging. 

“…it’s the writing out loud that makes me feel best, the part of the process before I click “Publish”, not what happens after. Anything after is a bonus.”

~ I [still] blog therefore I [still] am by Alan Levine.