busy
jongibbs shares some tips on mistakes to avoid in blogging. Many of these are good, some debatable. My thoughts...1) Don't be boring. To this I add: Know what you and your audience consider interesting. There are different branches of blogging; the core of one is often annoyingly irrelevant in another.
2) Don't tell people what to do. Applies to some branches far more than others: there are advice blogs, and general blogs where the author is an expert whose advice is relished by their audience.
6) Don't promote yourself or your work in someone else's blog (unless invited to do so). I'd simply amend this to "... in a way that annoys people." Because one of the best means of self-promotion is also a terrific content-booster: making a comment about your work when it is relevant to the discussion. I mean, come on, if I see someone lamenting, "Everyone tells me to write my own rituals, but nobody says how!" then of course I'm going to point them to Composing Magic. That's WHY I wrote the book! Again, this varies by blog branch. Pimping is disliked in personal-blogging, but often embraced in professional or hobby blogs.
10) Filling in the blank, I add:
* Don't vanish. People get antsy if you post frequently and then disappear for days without a word. And if your posts are erratic to begin with, people tend to drift away.
* Don't write so badly that the technical errors drive away your audience. Good grammar, punctuation, and spelling are your friends.
Thoughts
October 11 2010, 06:57:03 UTC 10 years ago
Personal or diary-blogging is one of the main branches, and its parameters are quite different than most of the other branches. It tends to be more introspective and less interactive; that's not a bug, it's a feature.
>>I have noticed, however, that inviting my audience to comment is a recipe for utter silence. Nobody comments when I invite it, only when they feel strongly about the content.<<
I don't read a lot of blogs in this style, but from what I've seen, they may attract people who prefer to lurk. Making them feel conspicuous may not help. Conversely, most blog styles get better results when people are invited to speak up. That's one where you really have to know your audience.
Re: Thoughts
October 11 2010, 07:54:09 UTC 10 years ago
I started here on LJ 10 years ago, when the word "blog" wasn't really a word. I thought the idea of an online diary that you could share with your friends was a great idea. Way back when I have some discussions about the differences between dead-tree diaries and this.
While I've got a lot of people on my list now, I really did start this for irl friends. Follow the link for the last time I did some number-crunching on my list: http://raindrops.livejournal.com/506311.html#cutid1
Cool thing about that is that the numbers have changed. I have met more people on my list since then, most recent one being
Sure, I don't get a ton of comments on every post, but in 10 years here, I've made real and lasting and often irl connections beyond the core I started with. Quality over quantity... works for me. ;)