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Musings on bloggings

James had a series of questions that he posed to bloggers, asking us each to send him one "Golden Blogging Tip." Turns out I had way more than one. It would appear that I have a lot of opinions on things and like to express those opinions on the Internet. Who knew?! So I'm reproducing my full response to the request here, because - hey, free content for the lazy one! Feel free to share your own thoughts on blogging, here or in your own blog.

When/where do you write the best posts?
I don't think there's a formula. If there were, I would write great, amazing excellent posts every time. I also find that my definition of "best" is usually different from my readers' definition of best, which is why I have separate tags for "readers' choice" and "my favorite posts". I have been surprised before by the positive reaction to something that I wasn't even sure was worth publishing. There's no predicting it!

How do you prevent blogging fatigue?
I don't. If I'm tired of blogging, I just don't blog. Usually the sight of an empty index page is enough to get me up and at 'em again. I've seen many people quit blogging over the years, and I've also seen people say they're quitting, then come back. I've never quit altogether, although there have been times when I haven't posted for a while. It probably helps to have an overinflated sense of your own popularity, so that when that empty index page comes up you think, "I must blog! The people will despair if they do not hear from me for a week! They will think I am dead and they will care that I am dead! I can hear them now, clamoring for me to blog! I mustn't disappoint the common throng!" In reality, all that happens is my sister goes, "Why haven't you blogged anything? You should blog about X or Y" and then I go out and find topic Z in order to avoid blogging what she's ordered.

Sources of inspiration
Pants, mostly. I seem to blog about pants a lot. Whose pants fit, whose pants don't fit, where to buy pants, what kind of pants to wear to the store, etc.

Lately it's been all movies and TV, because all I do is work and watch movies and TV, and I don't blog about work.

Design tips
I used to change my design a lot more frequently, but I've had the current one for almost three years now. I used to worry a lot more about what other people saw in my blog, but nowadays at least half my readers are reading it in their RSS readers and never clicking through to the actual post. So I designed something that I like and have stuck with it.

Design won't make a blog, but it will break one. If I visit a beautifully designed blog with boring content, I won't be back. On the other hand, if I visit a blog with great content and it's, like, white Comic Sans on an aqua background with blinkies and animated gifs and horrible typos/misspellings aNd CaPiTaLiZaTiOn lIkE tHiS I may be so distracted by the horrible design that I don't want to come back or that I miss out on how good the content is. So design is important, but secondary to content.

Commenting
Commenting is good when you have something to say. "HEY, LOOK AT MY BLOG!" is not a good comment. "Hey, I wrote a post on this same topic and have some other ideas" is a good comment. So is, "I was going to comment on this post but my comment was eight paragraphs long so I just turned it into a blog post on my own blog." So is "Sarah is the most beautiful creature on earth and all of her opinions are exactly correct." I like those.

I visit the blog of just about everyone who comments on my blog. Sometimes I add them to my RSS feeds and sometimes I just click through when they comment. I usually even click through to the HEY LOOK AT MY BLOG people to see if their blog is as good as they think it is. Usually it isn't.

I comment a lot more frequently on n00bs' blogs than on blogs that regularly receive 30 comments per post. I like to encourage people to keep at it. If you're getting hundreds of comments already, I will have to have something really important to say in order to leave a comment, because I kind of figure, "What's the point? They've got plenty of feedback already and most of these people are saying what I'd say."

Linking
I think contextual links are much more flattering than general blogroll-style links. I would rather someone said in one of their posts, "Here's a post that srah wrote [link], and here's what I think about that subject" or "this post by srah made me ROFLMAOLOLOMG [link]" than just added me to their sidebar. I guess I like it because it shows they were actually reading and had a reaction.

Audience
Through the years, I have become more aware of my audience and also more aware of my potential audience. Before I publish something on the Internet, I try to think about who I expect to read it, but also who else might read it. Am I writing something that will incriminate me in some way? Would it look particularly bad to future prospective employers, mothers-in-law, or skeezy Google searchers? I haven't told any of my coworkers (or anyone I know in Srahtown, for that matter) that I have a blog, but I always try to think, "If they FOUND OUT that I have a blog, would they be okay with this?" This is also why I've never called Srahtown or The University I Work At by name - because if a prospective student (or worse yet, the parent of a prospective student) is Googling either of those names, I don't want my blog to influence them not to come here, just because I said the campus smelled funny one day.

Ending
I think I'm influenced a lot by short stories and essays and M. Night Shyamalan... I need to have a twist or a punchline or something at the end. I have plenty of posts that have just ended, but I'm never quite satisfied if I don't put something amusing in the end, no matter how hard that may be.

That's what she said.

srah - Tuesday, 11 March 2008 - 6:06 PM
Tags: blogging

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