Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Ghost blogging taking up too much time

I know it's silly to have a blog then post nothing for a month or two except a self-pitying birthday note. I'm a sad little blogger.

At least I am here. But I've been blogging my heart out elsewhere for a client, and it's been a strange experience.

For my part time job (no, they haven't let me go yet), I've been writing blog entries for three months now. The association I work for is taking a stand as a third party in the election going on now in my province, and among our tactics is to host a blog and to twitter. And as the resident writer, I've been writing nearly all of it.

At first it was just another writing assignment, one that required me to think against my own ideology. My name isn't anywhere on it, and just as well since my personal politics are quite a bit left of my employer's, so I could have fun with it. Still, my president read everything before I posted it and he notched up the right-wing rhetoric and/or the nastiness a bit every time. So one day I decided to do it his way and let him notch me down if needed. It was right around the time that the party we're against had a candidate make anti-Zionist comments, which offended me personally. And after that I had a small axe of my own to grind, and got a bit more nasty myself

Anyhow, for the last while I've been having a great time blogging for them. I write pithy comments, find fun stuff to blog about or tweet, and have really loved the writing.

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to air my personal problems in a public, yet semi-anonymous way, and to talk them out loud (in print). But it was also to become more familiar with the world of blogging. Clients of mine need me to explain these kinds of things like social media, so the better I understood them, the better I could do my job. And I've gained a lot of experience about what to do right (and even more about what to do wrong). But blogging for my client these last few months, I've gained an even better understanding of how to blog.

Now can I call myself a "social media expert" too?