For the past year, I’ve been practically begging my students to start their own websites, with emphasis on starting blogs. It’s a marketing tool, I’ve told them. A way to show people who you are and impress them with your mad skills. It occurred to me this week, though, that I’m wrong. That’s not why I started my website and not what I look for in blogs. Apologies, dear students, but your websites should not exist in order to get you a job; they should go way beyond that. A job – a connection with others – might be a byproduct of your site, but should not be the motivation behind the thing. Websites should surprise us and add value to some cultural dialogue, open up corners of the world we didn’t know existed and in general do something remarkable. At least, that should be the attempt, I think. So, to help get around the idea a blog=resume, here are seven things your blog should do.

1. Manage Your Ideas

Every human has a unique set of ideas, experiences and values. This is what makes us different (and the same). In his book, Linchpin, Seth Godin notes that his most valuable employees are the ones whose roles he can’t quite articulate. They bring something to the table that he can’t-that no one else can-and add value in unique ways, based on their experiences and knowledge. One way you earn respect and influence in an industry or genre or company is through communicating your ideas in some sort of organized forum (a book, a portfolio, a website, a meeting, a conversation). In grad school, I read a ton of books, explore various design and literary theories, visit museums and galleries, form opinions, teach, draw, think. Et cetera. I needed a space to organize all of the incoming information and to make it valuable in some way. Hence, this website. While my site will continue to evolve and change with my circumstances and perspective, it also documents my thinking through time and, one hopes, engages an interested audience.

2. Develop Goals

The beginning of any project is often inward and intuitive. As you become comfortable with the medium and the form of what you’re trying to communicate, you begin to look around and see what others are doing. As you become an expert, you form opinions about what works and doesn’t, and hone your craft accordingly. This is true of blogs, too. For instance, my site (why not). Several years ago, I purchased my domain name because I knew I wanted an online portfolio. Once I finally went through four iterations of that, I decided a blog would help organize ideas more cohesively and more comprehensively. Now that I am exploring the blogging community, I can see what I want – and don’t want – for this site and for my work (career). These things range greatly from functionalities to portfolio presentation, choices about subject matter, research methods, jobs, freelancing and more. The point: through integration into a [blogging, creative] community, we are able to better understand how we can use our capabilities as thinkers.

3. Demonstrate Passion

You cannot fake passion. You just can’t. Your website is a space for you to explore, explain and show your passions. What wakes you up in the morning? Keeps you up at night? What is the thing you do that feels like the essence of why you’re alive? In the book Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky (creator of Behance) discusses authenticity and the importance of Initiators. Initiators are humans who actually execute projects. A blog is a project executed and through the authentic presentation of your passions, others will be drawn to your ideas, to you. If it’s not already ridiculously clear what I’m passionate about: the smell of ink, the way metal lays ink on smooth vellum, sewing thread through paper, the following of a thought until it reaches the edge of the mind, talking about ideas, making ideas, making. Passions should be the point of departure for what you talk about on your website.

4. Craft Your Capacity to Communicate

Language, visual and verbal, is a critical means of development for anyone’s work. As projects begin intuitively, the reasons for them are not always clear. Nor are the words to explain the why, the what, the how. When we put words to our ideas, we immediately expand them and place them in reality. (In Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf talks about the way reading (and writing) changes the circuitry of the brain.) Through language, we find an audience, a platform and a voice. And we develop all of these things over time and practice. The best blogs are those with interesting, surprising, relevant content, which is communicated to us (I would argue) through writing. By attaching language to your concepts and practicing the way you present ideas to others, you internalize the dialogue and consequently speak more clearly (and more authentically) in various arenas.

5. Practice Your Mad Skills, Yo

The function of a blog inherently necessitates a skill set, dependent upon your goals and your readers, probably. Once more, to the example of my site. Here, I want to practice my writing in a disciplined way, so writing is one thing. I also freaking love to code, so any chance I get to edit some HTML/CSS, I’m all over it. There’s also a portfolio that needs to be well-crafted. I teach, too, so practice (preach?) what I learn from that here. And all of this is within the umbrella of design, which I’ll have a degree in soon, if all goes according to plan, so this is a space for me to test layouts/type combinations/palettes too. Basically, we are many things. A blog is a space to practice the crafts or skills related to your passions and develop a work ethic surrounding their development.

6. Convert Nonbelievers

Every week, I write articles for my site with five people in mind. First, my friend who has worked in the internet industry for over a decade (impressive!) and has limited interest in the world of design and illustration. Next, two of my brothers and my dad (think: insurance, sales, corporations). Lastly, my advisor-human, who I just want to impress (he sets a high bar). While a diverse and creative group, I’m still a kind of odd creature to them, drawing pictures with words and talking about it. It’s kind of like tapping on a fish tank, where both species stare at each other, wide-eyed. The point is that this group has no inherent interest in the things I’m passionate about (exempting my advisor, who is incredibly busy anyway), which means I have to diversify the way I speak in order to make my topics relevant to them. This is important to practice in virtually all of our endeavors, as Scott Belsky discusses in his book, because it allows you to reach a broader audience, thereby spreading your ideas further. I try, then, to connect my subject matter to some larger context, be it culture/trends, career-ish things, concepts for emerging creatives, or the Gulf Coast disaster. So: pretend no one cares about what you have to say, and your job is to convince them that your ideas are worth their investment of time.

Note, my dad still hasn’t subscribed to my blog but he did visit it at least twice last week. So what if I had to ask him.

7. Connect with Others

One of the lovely things about the internet is its capacity to reach others on a global scale. Through this kind of connection, you gain exposure to new ideas, to new ways of thinking and to a large, international network of brains. On top of all the pragmatic reasons for a community (building a business, e.g.), a community (a tribe, followers, fans…whatever you call it) is necessary to foster the evolution of your own thinking. A blog is like a critique, in this way. When my students show their work to each other, our small community works together to improve the concepts behind and within the work. The critique functions because we all believe in the capacity of the work to do something (incite change, give pleasure, communicate a message) and for this reason, the work and the critique are important. Same with blogs. Your community critiques and improves your ideas, and adds to them in some way. As others become excited about your ideas, you become increasingly enthusiastic too. (I can vouch for this. When I got a comment from someone other than my little brother, I felt exceptionally cool.)

Wrapping Things Up

A website, a blog, should not be approached as a means to an end because it will die that way. Instead, your blog is platform for communication, like a hive or a party. (Ooh, a party!) It’s a place where people come to hear/see/read good content and then engage with you, the accessible author. To look at it as a resume or a thing to get you a job is to limit it and to fail to do justice to the development of your ideas. I therefore beg of you: use your website as a space to grow your thinking.