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.

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.

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