Top Five Rules for blogging: #1 Keep it regular

Last mod­i­fied on 2009-11-16 10:45:12 GMT. 2 com­ments. Top.

Yes­ter­day I posted a list of my top five rules for blog­ging.

Mikey posted a response on Chris­t­ian Reflec­tions — and a com­ment — remind­ing me of the car­di­nal rule of blog­ging (that I missed). Link to other peo­ple. Reg­u­larly.  I like that rule. There will now be six posts in this series. Start­ing with this one…

Rule One — Blog Regularly

If you want your blog to last past the first week you need to have a plan to go past the first week.

Fig­ure out a scope of top­ics you want to talk about. Come up with a reg­u­lar fea­ture. Do what­ever it takes to have a steady stream of con­tent — but in my expe­ri­ence most would be blog­gers start up with big dreams and fall over after the sec­ond post.

The best way not to do this is to just post for the sake of post­ing until you develop a rhythm. Blog­ging is all about momen­tum. Momen­tum doesn’t build itself. The phys­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion of the con­cept is that momen­tum is mass mul­ti­plied by veloc­ity. You can’t gen­er­ate blog­ging momen­tum with­out con­tent posted regularly.

Read­ers won’t stick around if you don’t post often. Your friends might. But unless they sub­scribe straight away they’ll prob­a­bly for­get about you.

You need to be pre­pared to pub­lish half pol­ished thoughts and let your com­menters do some work — if you can get com­menters (but that’s rule two). That’s the beauty of the medium. Don’t see blog­ging as a place to share essays. It can be. But the pres­sure will kill you and keep you from posting.

Top five rules for blogging: #2 don't blog for comments

Last mod­i­fied on 2009-11-11 12:52:09 GMT. 3 com­ments. Top.

Here are all five tips, and here’s my post on the first one.

Com­ments are great. All blog­gers love com­ments. They make us feel spe­cial. Almost as spe­cial as a link. Depend­ing on your blog love lan­guage (which Simone posted about back in Jan­u­ary).

Com­ments indi­cate reader engage­ment. Com­ments — even neg­a­tive ones — show that some­one cares enough about your ideas to respond.

But if you hang your blog­ging hat on the num­ber of com­ments you get — and make a deci­sion to con­tinue, or not to con­tinue, on that basis — then you’re bound for dis­ap­point­ment. Peo­ple don’t like to com­ment. I read about 300 blogs, I com­ment on a hand­ful. I should com­ment on more — know­ing as I do that peo­ple like get­ting comments.

Com­ments are not a mea­sure of qual­ity. They’re not a mea­sure of how much your post is appre­ci­ated. They’re not really a mea­sure of any­thing except how good you are at annoy­ing peo­ple or how clev­erly you hook your readers.

Because I like awe­some sci­en­tific analy­sis I’ll repost this graph I made a while back.

And fur­ther analy­sis — I men­tioned how bad my blog was when I first started the other day (prompt­ing some peo­ple to head back to the archives). It was really bad. Ter­ri­ble. And yet I scored more com­ments per post in those days by a long shot.

If you’re going to blog for any mea­sur­able out­come reg­u­lar vis­i­tors and sub­scribers. Or blog for google key­words so that you can attract ran­dom vis­i­tors who might subscribe.

Blog­ging for com­ments is a thank­less exercise.

Top five rules for blogging: #3 write lists

Last mod­i­fied on 2009-11-12 12:17:42 GMT. 7 com­ments. Top.

Here are all five tips, and here’s my post on the first one, and here’s the sec­ond one.

I think this post is per­haps best expressed in list form… here’s a list I wrote some time ago about why I write lists, and another almost iden­ti­cal post that in turn is almost iden­ti­cal to this one.

And here’s why you should write them if you want your blog to keep going.

1. Lists are quick and easy. They’re good for keep­ing momen­tum. If in doubt write a list.
2. Lists kill writer’s block.
3. Lists encour­age dis­cus­sion — nobody ever agrees with what you’ve included or the order in which you include it.
4. Lists are linkbait — they get shared. My most amaz­ing day of traf­fic ever came from a list.
5. Lists allow you to share unfin­ished ideas in batches.
6. Lists force you to struc­ture your thoughts in a suc­cinct man­ner. They’re good for the reader as well. I’ll read lists that come through my RSS feeds every time. They offer a good return on reader investment.

Top five rules for blogging: #4 Be prepared to write stupid posts

Last mod­i­fied on 2009-11-15 07:40:32 GMT. 1 com­ment. Top.

This is, as the head­ing indi­cates, the  num­ber four in a series of five posts. Here are all five tips, and here’s my post on the first one, here’s the sec­ond one, and here’s the third.

As we dis­cussed in tip num­ber one — noth­ing kills a blog like a loss of momen­tum. I think this tip is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant in the early stages of a blog.

Blogs aren’t a great medium for peo­ple want­ing to pub­lish pol­ished essays every time. Some posts are going to be not as good as other posts.

More often than not it’s the posts I think are a bit rub­bish that get a spike in traf­fic or see increased comments.

The best solu­tion I’ve come up with in order to keep my blog­ging juices flow­ing is to just post. As often as pos­si­ble. This means I’ve writ­ten some absolute rub­bish in my time, which on the whole has con­tributed to the qual­ity of this blog in a neg­a­tive man­ner. But, I’ve also man­aged to stick at blog­ging for almost 4 years and almost 2,600 posts.

My post rate, and my traf­fic, have picked up since I decided to take the “just post any old thing” approach…

I have one or two rules that I use when decid­ing whether or not to post some­thing. There is a limit to how stu­pid my posts can be with­out cheap­en­ing the expe­ri­ence of vis­it­ing this site.

There’s an impor­tant over­ar­ch­ing pre­cept guid­ing my posts — I am a Chris­t­ian before I am a blog­ger, and this cre­ates a ten­sion… I want to glo­rify God with this blog — and I use it as a vehi­cle for artic­u­lat­ing my thoughts on what I’m learn­ing or think­ing about Chris­tian­ity. But I also like post­ing really silly things. Things that are prob­a­bly at the pin­na­cle of human stu­pid­ity. And toi­let humour. Hav­ing two columns has helped me come to grips with this ten­sion — it prob­a­bly doesn’t help feed readers.

I am, in this post, deal­ing with my tip to be pre­pared to post stu­pid stuff, I’m not sure that I see this stu­pid stuff as a way to do any­thing but keep momen­tum going and per­haps entice peo­ple here to be amused — I sus­pect more peo­ple come for the stu­pid stuff than for the thought out stuff.

Here is, for want of a bet­ter label, my check­list for post­ing a stu­pid post.

1. Did it amuse me? — If the answer is yes I’ll prob­a­bly post it. If the answer is no, I’ll con­sider whether it may impress, amuse, or inform, any­body else who I know reads my blog.
2. Will it amuse other peo­ple — this one’s not a deal breaker and comes down to the blog­ging for com­ments prin­ci­ple. I like hav­ing read­ers, but I’d prob­a­bly approach blog­ging the same way even if I didn’t.
3. Is it likely to offend peo­ple I care about. I prob­a­bly won’t post these — or I’ll check first.
4. Has it been posted everywhere/watched by mil­lions? It has to be really worth­while to post if every­body has already seen it — you won’t find any danc­ing wed­ding entrances here…
5. Am I break­ing any laws? This one is pretty impor­tant. Don’t post any­thing illegal.

Top five rules for blogging: #5 comment elsewhere

Last mod­i­fied on 2009-11-16 12:39:04 GMT. 7 com­ments. Top.

Blog read­ers don’t just fall from the sky… well that’s only partly true. A lot of read­ers come via Google. And they may as well fall from the sky.

To sig­nif­i­cantly boost your traf­fic you can do one of two things — you can write google friendly copy, or you can try to steal other people’s read­ers by get­ting involved in their blog community.

I don’t know how many read­ers I’ve pil­fered from Ben and Simone — but I’d sug­gest the link love I score from them was a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in my mov­ing to more than 500 unique read­ers a week.

500 read­ers a week isn’t a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber. I’m cer­tainly not about to quit my job and become a full time blog­ger. But I’m com­fort­able with that. I think if I wanted to increase that fig­ure dra­mat­i­cally I’d take one strat­egy — I’d com­ment on pop­u­lar blogs. Par­tic­u­larly pop­u­lar blogs that cover sim­i­lar top­ics to mine.

Read­er­ship is only part of the pic­ture. Blog­ging reg­u­larly can be tough. I think that’s why so many blogs fal­ter. One of the things that makes it eas­ier is the sup­port of peo­ple who leave encour­ag­ing com­ments, and post links to stuff they like that you’ve writ­ten. You don’t get this sort of sup­port unless you know the per­son in real life and as such want to see their blog con­tinue, or you com­ment and share the link love elsewhere.

That’s my the­ory anyway.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

Read Nathan's 3799 articles.