10 Billion Tips on Better Blogging

My friend Rob posted about the benefits of blogging and he suggested offering whatever tips I might have in my blog. So I’m taking him up on the offer. I haven’t been blogging for very long and it’s been a strange trip so far, but I thought I’d offer whatever I can. I’ve found a lot of the advice I’ve seen on blogging to be wrong, at least for me; so I’m going to offer some tips that are counter-intuitive. I’m just feeling confrontational I guess.

- Blog for people. I think the main reason to keep a blog is to interact with other bloggers. The people who I’ve met and talked to through this blog have helped me keep it together through a very rough month. I’ve met people who I share interests, problems, solutions… etc.  

-  Let a blog define itself. People say you should decide what a blog is going to be about before you start. Whatever idea you have, it will probably change. So what? You can always edit or delete old posts or allow people to see the evolution to how you got here. When you start off with some hardcore plan, either you get overwhelmed trying to do everything at once or the subject matter is too narrow to keep up the content.

- Talk about your pet. People say you shouldn’t talk about personal stuff or your cat. The posts that got me a lot of readership have been the one’s based on my personal experience. Not to mention, there are a lot of people who own a parakeet as well. Talk about what you want to talk about.

- Comment, visit, respond. Part of blogging is paying attention to what others are doing with their blog. If someone comments on my blog, I will visit their site after I respond to what they said. I’ll look for posts that I have something say. I find it odd that some of these ‘problogger’ types don’t respond to their readership. I feel like I’m talking to voice mail.

- Post when you feel like it. Post 20 times in one day and then don’t post for a week. Post every day. Make your posts one paragraph or three pages. Post only on Tuesday at 3 a.m. I got in the habit of posting every morning for a while. It helped set up my day.

- Go for a walk. I don’t even follow this suggestion. I spend way too much time sitting here staring a screen for something interesting to happen. It’s hard to blog when you don’t have a life away from a computer.

I’m out of suggestions for now. I hope this helps someone out there feel a little more comfortable blogging. I’ll add some more tomorrow.

Namaste

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