The tiny things helping you build the big gig: few things about blogging

Blogging is not that easy, you know...

Blogging is not that easy, you know...

First of all, when you say the word blog, you say subjectivity. No matter the work behind blogging, research and development, a blog will always be written by a person. And when you say “a person”, you say a human being with feelings, with likes and dislikes. Not journalists, not marketeers, not advertisers, not consultants, not gurus. You say people.

And while the success of blogs is based on people’s needs to know more about other people, successful blogging means to put a piece of your self in your writings. That’s where your influence stands. Otherwise, no one would care about your opinion or about your expertise. They can just as well read a book. But what people want is personal opinion. And your thoughts, as an opinion driver, are more important than some specialist’s. That’s why they care about you. Because you’re human, you have feelings, while specialists are machines, are bossy, they always know better. And no one wants another boss. The boss stands for corporation, a good blogger on his niche stands a more experienced friend.

Now here are a few bullets regarding the way you could grow as a blogger. Please forgive me for not respecting some of them, I’m working on this blog piece by piece, while doing my daily job as a comunicator for an agency, as a WordPress developer, as an associate reporter for a large news website and as a blogger in some other language than English.

  1. Don’t write huge articles unless you know people are definetly sure they want to read them. Huge articles are good if you publish them twice a week. Write medium-length articles with tons of information.
  2. When you post an article on your blog, don’t try to be a journalist. Don’t try to respect all the journalistic rules, just the basics. Be yourself! Write like you would talk to your friends. Your readers don’t need a teacher or a boss, they need a friend.
  3. When writing your own opinion on a certain topic, you can always make fun of yourself. Auto-irony is cool, it’ll make the reader smile, even laugh. If your reader feels good on your blog, he’s going to read more of your articles. That means more pageviews and, in the end, that means passionate users.
  4. Use paragraphs and headings. Don’t write 3 miles of text without hitting Enter. People get bored. On the internet, readers surf pages, they look for certain info. Use headings for different ideas in the article.
  5. Use common words so everyone will understand what you want to say. Don’t be that professor at the University, using philosophy terms while buying a burger on the corner fast-food. Don’t let your readers search for online dictionaries. Please, I mean it!

We talked about writing. What about design?

That are the few of my rules about how to write a blog post. Here a few rules about your website’s design:

  1. Keep it simple. Don’t use the whole rainbow on your site. Don’t make it look like The Sun. Your reader’s eyes get tired of too much color.
  2. Never use dark colors on the background of your entries. And never use “color: #fff” (that’s white) on a black background. The contrast sends everyone away.
  3. Don’t use small font sizes (the only one which is actually OK is 11 pixels with Verdana) or way to big sizes. It’s gross.

Conversation rules

  1. Never swear on your blog unless necesary. Don’t insult your redears. Use arguments, but don’t start a fight. They might not come back.
  2. Leave comments on other blogs. If you have opinions and your arguments are interesting, people will want to know what you have to say.
  3. Don’t fight and never insult “bigger” bloggers. most probably, they’ll never link to your blog.

And a few other things to remember

  1. Write as often as you can, show your readers that’s you’re alive. Daily, at least. Write down your thoughts and opinions, don’t just post videos and pictures.
  2. Use blogrolls.
  3. Give info about yourself! Create the About page and write a short description: who you are, how old are you, what you do, where you’re from, where you work. Attach a picture of yourself, it gives you more credibility.

That’s a short list. I have another couple of lists on the same topic, maybe I’ll publish them some other time. I hope this helps. It’s never about shutting down your blog, it’s always about finding your own public. If you’re a pretty OK writer and you’re full of ideas, if your perceived by your readers as an optimistic person, you have all the chances in the world to grow. Have fun!