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Blogging and the Bibliophile

For middle-school or high-school students who love to read books, the theme for a blog may be right under their noses.

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One of the advantages of being a school student is that you will have to read different kinds of books. There will be other books that you read because you want to. Every time you read a book, you will form an opinion about the book. Sometimes other friends may ask you for your opinion about a book if they know that you have already read it. Those opinions can be the theme of a blog.

In other words, you could set up a book review blog.

Here are a few tips to make your book review blog a rewarding activity.

  1. No spoilers. Do not ever give away the ending of a story, or any plot twists. That would be a disservice to other readers and to the author.
  2. Kindness. Be kind in how you judge a book. It is very tough to be an author, and you want to share only constructive opinions. If a book did not resonate with you, then suggest the kind of readers that may find the book appealing.
  3. Intrigue. Leave some intrigue. Leave some unanswered questions. Make your readers wonder, and want to come back to read your next review.

Remember that if you can write your original thoughts about the books you read, very soon you may even find a following. Some day you may be able to meet and interview the authors of books you read and review on your blog.

Create your own rating system. If it is clever and catchy, bibliophiles
will start looking for your rating on a book, and that is powerful.

Your book reviews can also include a link to the book for readers of your blog to purchase it directly from your favorite book store.

A book review blog will help you develop powerful analytical skills that are very useful in the real world. Do consider creating your own book review blog.

This blog post is a warm-up before introducing school students to the Blog School by
AlligatorZone.

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Blogging is ‘Body’ Building

Spencer Burleigh, cofounder of Rent the Backyard once casually
mentioned that he wished he had started maintaining a blog when he was in
school. Later, we at AlligatorZone invited him for a special podcast to hear
more of his views on blogging. Along with reading this essay, please also consider
listening to that podcast (linked here).

Now, back to the topic of this article. By ‘body building’,
what we mean is building a body of work.

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Remember the chicken or egg situation that students leaving
college sometimes face, where they do not get hired because they lack work
experience, and do not have work experience because they do not get hired?
Blogging addresses this challenge by allowing a student to display a body of work easily to the outside
world.

A blog empowers students to independently publish their best
work and make it easy for anyone to get a quick glimpse into how they think.

What can be a body of work for a middle-school or a high
school student, you may wonder. School projects in a favorite subject can be a
body of work. Deep thoughts about a passion project or a hobby demonstrate a
body of work.

If you can write about your schoolwork or hobby and bring your
own perspective, it will be unique and refreshing. What you write in your blog
can be interesting to any reader who wants to learn about the subject you love
and to learn about you.

Your blog is one simple way for your self-promotion without
self-promoting.

However, the benefit does not end there. Regular blogging by
itself results in a steady flow of creative expression. That makes a blog its
own body of work. Something that every employer in industry, every college
admission official and every professional looks for is whether a candidate has
clarity in expressing ideas and can write in an engaging manner. A carefully managed
blogging strategy, where students write consistently and find their voice will
pay huge dividends for a long time.

This article is a ramp up to our launch of our new module ‘Blog School’. Learn about our other programs at AlligatorZone.org