Does blogging make you smarter?

Tonight, I will be blogging about blogging.

How meta.

The road by which I arrived at this choice of posts is a bit twisty. Follow me if you can or will.

As someone with a mind oriented towards things like literature and art, I tend to avoid business like the plague. Sadly, complete avoidance is practically impossible for a writer in the 21st Century. Additionally, my interest in technology inevitably leads me into waters the color of money. That is how I came across this post that recommends that business executives keep a blog. Why should they do such a thing, you may ask? Well, there are actually a few good reasons listed in the article.

There are the typical talking points. Expand your social media network, increase brand visibility, procure your grubstake for new ventures (or at least that's how I'd put it), and the usual hollow jargon you come across on such texts. But one point really stood out to me.

Blogging, if done well, actually makes you smarter.

Yes, I've heard all the arguments to what it has done to language and composition. The Internet has opened the floodgates to the masses and to get at quality writing, you must first wade through a great deal of garbage. The same is true for music, filmmaking, basically any creative endeavor. Instead of all that, I'm talking about what blogging does for the individual writer. Here's a quote from the article:

"To keep my content fresh and interesting, I’ve been forced to research and learn about industry leaders, better ways to use social media, and new methods and strategies to help my clients better position themselves as good-fit candidates.

I’ve become smarter about executive job search, personal branding, online visibility, social media, networking, and so much more."

You know what? I agree. Even if I can't see eye-to-eye with the subject matter referenced, the heuristic mechanism is, I believe, a valid one. There is epistemology at work on good blog pages. In order to generate quality content, I scour several websites every day for news and bizarre goings on. Sometimes what I find ends up as a mere tweet. Other items, ones I feel a strong interest in/connection to or ones that I believe I can thoroughly expand upon, are what I deem as "blog-worthy." Contrary to a few criticisms I have received in the comments section, I really do try to track down and support what I'm writing about with links and resources. Hopefully said support is from quality sources more often than not, but sometimes it isn't and that is deliberate so as it's very much part of the fun.

So has blogging made me smarter? I really think that it has. It has forced me to read more, to expand my interests, and to investigate matters that I might not otherwise. Blogging is one of the things I look forward to at the end of the day. You wouldn't think it would be relaxing at the busy time of a semester, but it is.

Even if my brain feels like a hard drive about one year overdue for a defragging (see pic above). Seriously, I'm fried. I have an overworked inner child whining for comic books right about now.





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