Some months ago I read a “how to blog” post by Tony Pierce. The post incidentally helped him pick up a bloggie. Well now with the necessary experience I feel like writing my own for the benefit of my blogging people. I hope who ever reads this grabs a thing or two from it. Happy reading.
1) One of the secrets to blogging well is starting well. You don’t want to start a blog and then after making some posts, getting publicity and gathering a fan based suddenly realize that your blogging software package/blog hosting site sucks and you have to change. Do the necessary research before picking a blog software package/blog hosting site. Changing can be very tiring and at times lead to a change of URL. Blogger is a good software package/blog hosting site for a beginner, Xanga really isn’t. Cos on it commenting is restricted to Xanga members only. A blog post should be such that ANYBODY can read and if he/she so wishes leave a comment.
2) When blogging go for original posts. There’s no need of making a post about “SixApart buying LiveJournal” or “Yahoo increasing its e-mail storage to 1GB” when everybody know you copied it from the Wired or CNET News. You‘re not the fucking BBC or CNN, so you don’t have to pretend to be. It’s better if you give us your reaction in detail to such stories then making your post 95% the copied news and 5% your own view of it. 10% the news and 90% your view on it is far better.
3) As concerns making a blog post if you don’t know what to write shut up! Silence is far better than filling your blog with junk and making it crappy. In other words a small blog with very informative and entertaining posts is far better than a voluminous blog with stupid rants/boring stories of one’s everyday life. Example, a dumb post like “hi, I don’t know what to write today, bye”. Crap art is totally out of the question for blogging.
4) When writing your posts put links when necessary. For example you’re talking on an issue and you refer to something which half of the people don’t know about and will seriously hinder their understanding of the point you’re tying make, a simple link will solve the problem. Thank God for the inter-connectivity of the internet a simple link (the underlined/clickable words you often see) saves one the stress of going out to buy a book/make an inquiry as is done in the world of book/magazine-reading. Also respect other people’s work, when you use someone’s material be gracious enough to say so/put a link to the original…if need be.
5) Make generous use of pictures. A little imagery works wonders in putting a point across or at times it just adds a little humour. Don’t be all uptight and just fill your blog with text, text and more texts, you’re not writing a fucking constitution for Christ’s sake.
6) Let your readers get to know you. You could start with a catchy caption/title for your blog which really spells out the true you. Mine is “TRAE days” (I got that from “Dre day”, a favourite phrase of Hip hop artist Dr Dre). Also put a little text (something like a book’s abstract/synopsis) which in a few sentences summarizes what you and your blog is about so that prospective readers will decide if they want to read your blog or not, and put themselves in the right frame of mind to do so if they wish to read it. For example mine is “A diary of the days of…”. A little pic of yourself or an avatar is also welcomed to make your blog unique and more personal and not just some ranting by an anonymous. A link to an “about me page” is also good were readers can learn about you possibly in a paragraph or two. Leave your email for feedback. You never know what people will want to put across to you in private.
7) On your blog’s side bar leave links to your favourite sites or blogs. This will help your readers get more in tune with your world by checking out the stuff/sites you also dig. Also do get HTML and if possible CSS knowledgeable. You can only get a good looking blog if you know how to design one. And you know what they say: looks (and arrangement) is everything. Don’t be shy to ask for help at any point you get confused. We all make mistakes, nobody knows it all.
Get your archiving right, it’s the key to allowing people surf through your blog in and out and thus hear all what you have to say. If you post between of 1-10 times in a month archiving monthly is your best bet. If you post more frequently weekly archiving is preferable.
9) Publicity, publicity, publicity! Get people to checkout your blog. Paraphrasing the Bible “men do not light a candle and put it under a bed, they instead put it on a candlestick so that all might see the light”. They same thing with blogs, you don’t produce write-ups for yourself only to read. You do so for the world to read and learn from. Spread the word about your blog at every opportunity. Including your blog’s URL in your e-mail’s signature and that of your forum profile (if you’re part of any) is a good idea. Also add yourself to as many blog directories as possible. When commenting on other people’s blog or anywhere on the web leave your blog’s URL. When you write posts on particular issues and you feel the world necessarily needs to read them advertise them by sending e-mails, offline messages (via chat) and making posts about them in forums.
10) Get a site feed; you know the RSS and atom stuff. People who hyper-blog sure do find them necessary, so it’ll be good if you could spread the word that way.
11) Get a statistic counter. It’s an icon you place on your blog which tells you who and who is checking out your blog and from what source; be it from search engines or web pages. It helps as it tells you what people hitting your blog really want to know about so that you can work on that aspect. It also tells you what people feel about you online on the different web pages that link to you. statcounter has been a good choice for me.
So good luck to you as you implement what you’ve just learnt, comments/feedback is highly welcomed. Don’t forget to check back for more tips and cool posts. Peace!
I blog therefore I am!