Blogging
Well here we go again. I was looking around at different sites on how to blog and trying to think up something to blog about on my other blog when I came across this blog on 30 Blogging Tips to Screw Up. This blog entry is pretty much just a list of things new bloggers do to screw up, but I did find some interesting things in that list that I wouldn’t have thought about. like the following:
Blog without passion
Blog without personality
Take all blogging tips and advice for granted and don’t pass them through your personal filter
Ignore the importance of SEO
The last one I noticed because I have no idea what SEO is, and in the spirit of knowledge I looked it up on Wikipedia. Then I realized it stood for search engine optimization, and I felt kinda dumb. The other tips on things not to do on the site I found useful and I plan on looking through more of the blogs on the site to find more tips on how exactly to avoid these pitfalls.
Well I was feeling a bit discouraged at this point. So many ways to screw up and no idea what to do. I found this blog from Gala Darling in which she talks about how to increase your traffic. What I found interesting was when she was talking about filling a niche and then went on to talk about writing what you enjoy. I think these two tips together make sense because if there is something you are really passionate about chances are there is someone else out there that is too. Now if I can just figure out what that thing is I’ll be all set.
April 28, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Thanks for the link and I’m glad you’ve found my post useful.
April 29, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Great article MW. I read the blog from Darling and had a little AHH HAA in my head. Just as I suspected ,write about what you know and love. I found a website that is listed on my blog about the ten things you should do when blogging. Between the two, I guess we got it covered…..dm
April 29, 2008 at 5:46 pm
It seems like from the research we’ve been doing that to be a successful at blogging you have to be extremely passionate about what your doing. You almost have to be vain and humble at the same time. Vain, because you need to self-promote your blog and humble in order to take criticism people may give you. I liked the articles you posted, especially the 30 Blogging Tips to Screw Up. When you first start writing you are bound to make many of those mistakes, but you learn as you go along.
April 29, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Blogging definitely is a learning process, I doubt anyone can claim they were a great blogger straight out of the gate. It seems the best way to learn is to take reader suggestions and criticism to heart when you make mistakes. Maybe your first blog will just be a learning experience which allows you to be better prepared to get it right, or as close to it as possible, on your second blog. There is no doubt about the need to be passionate about the subject, otherwise it would be impossible to continually write about it, day after day, to keep publishing content about a subject you could care less about. I’m still having trouble coming up with a concept for my second blog, maybe I’m thinking about it TOO hard!
April 30, 2008 at 3:24 am
@jdbosley
The advantage of start-up bloggers is that they can learn from others’ mistakes. There’s plenty of information out there to analyze. Blogging is way past its beginning era.
April 30, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I really like how you have such a conversational style when you write. I feel like I sound so snooty. lol I liked the article by Gala, it had some nice tips about commenting on other peoples blogs and participating in forums. I really liked the suggestion to ask your readers to post questions to help feed your writing.
And don’t worry about feeling dumb, when I saw “SEO” I didn’t realize what it was either.
I think its really neat how quickly the people we linked to for our research got back to us. It just shows you who is paying attention.
May 1, 2008 at 3:11 am
@jlphannah
Paying attention to your audience is essential for two reasons.
1. Helps you generate more content for your own blog.
2. This is one thing I was about to write an article today (nice coincidence). You have to think of your blog like it’s your business. You don’t have to sell products or affiliate programs of any kind. You sell yourself, your writings. Your audience is your clientèle and like with any successful business having a good Customer Relationship Management is very important.