From the Beyond Bylines Team: Our 2019 Blogging Resolutions

As the new year approaches, the Beyond Bylines team is making resolutions.

We’re looking back on the past year and setting goals for what we’d like to accomplish with our writing in 2019.

Here are our personal writing goals for the new year.

Brett Savage-Simon, director, audience relations

In 2019, I want to focus on multimedia for my blog posts.

Though I know how important images are to telling a story more effectively, I have yet to master it.

I had a Canva tutorial many moons ago but now it’s time for a refresher course. I want to be able to add art to my Beyond Bylines posts and others when needed.

No more shying away. I need to dive in and just do it!  After all, practice makes perfect!

Stephanie Donovan, senior customer content specialist

I’ve been writing Blogs We Love posts for about a year and a half now. I really enjoy finding bloggers who are passionate about interesting subjects. It’s amazing what someone’s love for what might have once been a hobby can become.

As far as 2019 goes, I’m looking to branch out and discover unfamiliar topics and bloggers, and pass the inspiration forward to our readers.

Anthony Vence, senior customer content specialist

I would like to get more involved in the editing process.

One of my favorite parts of being a newspaper editor was giving freelance writers feedback and suggestions on how to improve their content. I would love to provide the same feedback for blogs.

Christine Cube, senior manager, audience relations 

This year, I took on the leadership and management of the Beyond Bylines blog. It honestly has been one of the most satisfying and challenging moves of my career.

Editing the voices and talented writers who contribute to this great resource has been incredible and humbling.

For two consecutive years, Beyond Bylines has been named No. 17 among the Top 50 journalism blogs, according to Feedspot. We’re pretty proud of that, and we’d like to keep it up.

For my part, I’d like to continue to manage this awesome writing team. It’s my aim to help each writer strengthen their foundation and develop a style and voice they can be proud of, while maintaining the quality of content our readers have come to expect.

Joanna Giannell, senior customer content specialist

As a writer for Media Insider, my contributions to the blog usually deal with summarizing media stories that occurred throughout the week.

In 2019, I’d like to do more creative and organic blog posts that require me to come up with a topic to write about.

And although I’ve gotten better at time management when it comes to writing my posts, I still like to make it a goal of mine to avoid falling behind and scrambling the last minute!

Julian Dossett, freelancer

This is my first year on the Beyond Bylines team, and I’ve had a blast!

Throughout 2018, it has been my absolute pleasure to examine the effects that emerging tech has had on the world of news and media. Next year I want to step it up.

My resolution is to use Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to find an expert source for a 2019 story. HARO is an amazing tool that Cision offers to help journalists enrich their reporting, and I am woefully unfamiliar with it — but that’s all about to change!

Erienne Muldoon, senior customer content specialist, Virtual Press Office

My blogging resolution is to read more.

All of my best story ideas have been inspired by something I’ve read — and I like to think of my writing as an amalgamation of all the poems, fantasy novels, newspaper articles, nonfiction books, and everything in between that I’ve encountered over the years.

You learn so much about yourself and your own writing by reading that of others. I can’t wait to read more of my peers’ work in 2019!

Jennifer (Davids) Flynn, customer content specialist

My resolution is to write more often in general, and specifically to write more about topics I’m unfamiliar with in order to grow as a writer.

Rocky Parker, manager, audience relations

I began 2018 never having written a blog. I’ve now written 17 and can hardly believe it!

Being new to blogging, there are several things I’d like to work on in the coming year.

To start, I’m making a resolution to go outside my comfort zone (listicles) and try my hand at different blog formats. Luckily, I have some incredibly experienced teammates to learn from and bounce ideas off of.

Also, I tend to overthink and second-guess myself quite a bit when writing. In 2019, I’d like to continue developing my process and become more confident and comfortable in my writing.

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Rocky Parker works in Audience Relations at PR Newswire. Check out her previous posts for Beyond Bylines. When she’s not working, Rocky typically can be found cooking, binge watching a new show, or playing with her puppy, Hudson.