Sheila B Robinson on Blogging in the New Year!

Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays loyal AEA365 readers! I’m Sheila B. Robinson, Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor with a few tips and tools for bloggers, and a quick update to our contribution guidelines.

 

Evaluation and blogging go together like apple pie and ice cream – each great on its own, but together? Fabulous!

Many evaluators have their own blogs but even more (hundreds, in fact!) have contributed to aea365 over the years. Several have contributed to our blogger series over the years, and have told us they enjoy blogging for many reasons. Some enjoy writing, others enjoy sharing what they have learned, and still others think of their blogs as ways to organize and archive their work. There are, of course, many other reasons to blog about our work and we’re hoping that more of you will come forward in 2017 and contribute to aea365!

Rad Resource: Check out HubSpot’s The Ultimate List of Websites Every Blogger Should Bookmark. Sites listed include ones that help you keep organized, sites for blog ideation, data analysis, writing, editing, and sharing on social media. Just for laughs (and I got them!) I tried Portent’s Content Idea Generator which supplies you with a title (useful when you have writer’s block), if you give it a keyword. Of course, I tried “evaluation” and got several, um, interesting title ideas, including this one: Why Evaluations are Cuter Than a Kitten (feel free to write and send me the article, if that particular title inspires you!). Not all were as light-hearted as that one, and several were quite good, but the idea is that you get enough options for what to write about that something is certain to inspire you. 

Hot Tip: We have tweaked our Contribution Guidelines just a wee bit for the new year. Please check them out! Most notable is the fact that we have updated the word count to allow for posts up to 500 words. This comes after many, many requests for slightly longer posts. The other is that we suggest you include an author photo with your post. This is optional, of course, but it would certainly be nice for readers to see you!

Wishing all of you a happy, healthy 2017!

Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.