Blogging 101

I’m not claiming to be some sort of authority on blogging or anything. These are just my own personal preferences. You can take them as you want. Of course I wish everyone blogged this way, but the blog world doesn’t revolve around me. Hmph. But don’t start wondering if any of this is directed at you just because it may be applicable. I’ll tell you right now that it totally is. Right at YOU. :P Today I’m covering blogging. Tomorrow, commenting (leaving and receiving). Thursday, etiquette.

Blogging

1. Do not blog with the sole intention of a.) making money or b.) getting lots and lots of comments. Most other bloggers will see right through it, become annoyed and prevent you from achieving your goal by not responding in the way you’d hope. Focus on the content.

2. BREAK THAT SHIT UP!! There is nothing more aggravating to me than going to a blog and seeing that the entire post has no breaks in it, or maybe one or two in a 3 scroll post. It’s just one big blob of text that’s easy to get lost in and it makes it really easy to skim without actually reading or give up. Paragraphs, with one space in between them FTW.

3. SHORTEN THAT SHIT UP. The longer it takes to read, the more likely people won’t read it. And the more often you write long ass posts, the more often people will probably skip over your posts completely. If it takes a shit load of time or energy to write, it takes the same to read, and it can get really old having to expend that much energy on a daily basis. I try not to make my stuff too long, which is a conscious effort on my part because I’m super long winded. Actually, this post was long as hell originally. I was afraid that if I had broken it  into a series, it would have looked too much like I was biting off of Playgroupie’s Blog Tip Series, which I’m not, but it really feels like I am. But I’m not. So I went ahead and broke it into parts.

4. Stop posting multiple times a day unless you *really* have something important to say. I’ll get tired of seeing you in my reader and stop clicking all together. It’s very, very annoying. That’s what twitter is for. Or plurk. Leave a damn note on facebook, send an email – anything besides hit publish on another paragraph.

5. Make it interesting. And if you can’t, just don’t blog that day. That especially goes for you mommies. I think I explained very well how I feel about your empty baby book posts here. Take me for instance – my blog has been pure suckage lately. So I’m taking a break, starting next Monday. It’s going to be until the second week in October. I have to do it. Everything that’s been happening lately is weighing down my psyche and I can’t focus. Blogging isn’t fun right now. I need to stop. For a while. I know that it’s best for me and this blog because I write first and foremost for myself – and being as I’m not happy with the shit that’s piling up, I need to get it back where I think it should be. For me.

6. Your blog design/content:

• A unique and original design is always good. Folks are likely to hang around a bit longer if just to look around. If you’re good with photoshop, make a header. If you know CSS, fool around with your standard template a bit. If you have the money to spend on a designer, get a custom design. Me personally, I’m using a standard free wordpress theme that I found in a google search. I hate it, but I’m holding out for the marvelous Courtney aka Judith Shakespeare who designed my old blog and will be giving this one a complete overhaul in the future.
• Have a home button, or make your header clickable. I’d rather not have to delete the subpage from my address bar in order to get back to where I started.
• Those blog groups and rings and shit such as ‘The Mom Blogs’, ‘Crazy Hip Hop Hos’ or whatever? They don’t work. They just clutter your sidebar. I guarantee that your blog is not getting that much more traffic, but that main group site sure is from those pretty little icons they make mandatory for you to be included. Don’t believe me? Install statcounter and check how many hits you get from there. I’m guessing none.
• Speaking of sidebars: you don’t need a lot of shit. Take away my ads and you’ll see that my sidebars are extremely minimal. And, after BlogHer & the ‘Questions’ thing is over, the ‘I’m Speaking’ & ‘Maria’s Got Questions’ buttons will be gone so there will be even less. All you need are Feed links, archives, categories, and links to your ‘about; page and how to contact you. Oh, and maybe some social networking icons. I like those. I like to stalk your Flickr accounts especially. (:
• And, speaking of About Pages. You need a damn about page. People want to know more about who they’re reading, usually. I know I do. So tell me! And your stupid little one line blogger profile doesn’t count.
• Finally, speaking of ads, if you don’t like them I suggest you get Firefox [which you should have anyway] and the AdBlock Plus addon. Or shut the fuck up and ignore them. I tire of this whole ’selling out’ debate. It’s not your blog. And as long as the ads don’t affect the content, it shouldn’t matter. The two wonderful and lovely Jens at BlogHerAds told me quite plainly that advertisers might not want to run their campaigns on my blog because of my content, and I told them I was ok with that. Not a damn thing changed, and not a damn thing will.

*Tomorrow, Commenting 101.

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Tagged as: Courtney, Judith Shakespeare