Things I Wish I Knew When Starting a Blog

Busy cleaning up blog last couple of days, now trying to be semi-organised with URLs and the like and finding to my dismay that the tidy URL I had settled for means losing the numerous links to other sites that have grown over the last year. This extended exposure to blog software has got me thinking though about all the things I wish I knew when I started this venture, almost a year ago now. Things would have been so much easier, I’m sure. Here goes:

1. What’s Your Subject Many people who blog end up visiting these sites that supposedly give you the top tips of how to become a successful blogger. All of them tell you that what you absolutely need to do is settle for a topic, which is original and different and that has a clear target audience. Examples include the Porsche blog, the Azalea blog and the like. However, if you, like me are curious about most things, the notion of settling down to write about one topic and one topic alone is enough to make you wonder whether you could do it for more than 5 days. Never mind what you are passionate about, I would argue that faced with the prospect of having to write something about it consistently every day for a year is enough to make you lose interest in the topic altogether.
2. Who’s Your Audience The more time I spend on the net the more I begin to suspect that there are three reasons people surf the web: news, titillation (if you are a bloke) and humour. This statement doesn’t take into account all the time we spend on-line searching for nifty applications that can convert our wmas to mp3s or do some other menial task that we wouldn't have even considered before we all got suckered into this whole computer-thing. Why did I mention those 3 topics? Well, unless your blog material covers one or several of those topics, chances are that you will have to work that much harder to find your audience.
3. Publicising Your Blog How to grow the audience for your blog? Unless you are a super-famous author or celebrity, chances are people will not be typing your name or the name of your creation in a Google search box anytime soon. Shame, because what that means is that you will not only have to do all the hard work of being witty and entertaining in your posts, but you also have to engage in shameless self-promotion. Some sites claim that all you need to do is start sending pings to various sites that track blogs, but this is not the complete picture. You also have to get a deer-stalker hat a la Sherlock Holmes and start stalking blogs and forums, posting links to your site whenever and wherever there is a fleeting chance you could drive some traffic to it.
4. Obsessing about Visitor Numbers Sooner or later you begin to wonder if anyone at all is reading your blog. A few supporting comments here and there lift your spirits, but you need more fuel to make you write every day (as this apparently what you are supposed to do to encourage people to come back for more). So what to do? You sign up with some nifty visitor tracking site and install a bit of stealthy code on your site to keep track of which pages are the most popular and how many people, from which countries, come visit you regularly. Chances are you begin to get some elementary insights to the people reading your ramblings and you realise that many of the posts you thought were your finest moments of prose, are in fact the ones least read, or visited. How could this be? Maybe the posts are too long, not of interest to the visitors or maybe you just haven’t been shameless enough about promoting your posts? Needless to say, this you will never know for sure, but sooner or later you may very easily fall in the trap of beginning to experiment with topics simply to see the change in visitor numbers.
5. Getting ‘Trolled’ So you get people visiting. And leaving comments. The Zen of blog ownership is close. Until you discover that you really should have turned on authorisation for comments posted, as some nitwit leaves links all over your site for porn sites involving animals, children, vegetables and the like. Or, you get some humourless individual dissing you on the sites where you have so meticulously tried to promote your blog. In both cases, this stuff takes it’s toll, and you have to get used to it. These killjoys are out there and they like nothing more than raining on your parade.
6. Quoting people All of us have got it wrong sometime. Some authors don’t mind you quoting them with credits and link back to their site – whereas others prefer you simply link back to them. Beware of critical comments to someone else’s posting though, as sometimes even when you haven’t intended it, people get the wrong end of the stick.
7. Web Addresses and More Blog tip sites frequently tell you that your should have the name of your blog in the URL (web address) of your blog and the tidier the URL, the more serious a blogger you will appear. However, when you are just starting you are often not sure whether you want to do this blogging thing, so chances are you sign up with some free blogging service or an on-line blog-provider. The downside is that unless you want to go through the rigmarole of registering a URL and engaging with some domain mapping and a more advance subscription to the blog service, you will have to put up with the (often) lengthy web addresses you get given by the blog provider. Organising things in retrospect are also a possibility, but often entail losing links and TrackBacks that people have submitted and of course, especially time consuming if you have 100 or more posts. I just started afresh the other day, deleting all but 20 of the most recent posts. My fans will hate me now.
8. In for the Long Haul So having slowly figured out the answers to all the things above, I’m not sure I would have embarked on this (blog) journey, had I known all this in advance. My laziness would have probably got the better of me, but in hindsight I have been learning all along and of course know now much more than I did a year ago when I started. People will no doubt tell me that I shouldn't use the blog thing as a shameless vehicle for learning, but hey, what better motivator is there to make you condense your thoughts down to something vaguely relevant and digestible, than blogs?

Comments

[thisbe]

Thanks for this - great help - and just like you I'm wondering [sometimes] why I ever got into this blogging lark [failed would-be writer of Harlequin Romances perhaps? Desire for my 15 mins or more like 15 secs...].

Shameless self-promotion coming up: Ghandi's Steakhouse - http://thisbe.wordpress.com/

Cheers

[Thomas David Baker]

Boring pedantic point: "trolling" is "deliberately posting false information in order to elicit responses" [www.vikont.com/clients/glossary.htm] rather than "spamming" and the other stuff you talk about in number 5.

[The Avante Guardian]

Interesting read. Borders on Therapy.

(for him - Ed)

CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL BLOG RULE OFFENDER:

Moi, I'm what you might call uh wot's the opposite of passive-aggressive?

(a moron - Ed)

Bugger off Ed.

..when it comes to Blog rules.

It ought be a recognized medical condition.

It's insane the way that I CAN'T STOP BREAKING THE BLOG RULES.

The first article on Web No-No's I read, stated emphatically, "don't include animated pictures they annoy visitors" so I included about 8 of them.

The next pointer stated "don't use imbedded sound" you guessed it, I included 3 of them; on Wednesdays, one (a Benny Hill midi) is set to repeat 99 times.

I know they all say it's SO wrong, but I STILL can't stop breaking the rules.

In my head, Animated pics and Sound can all be stopped by hitting the STOP key.

Is that too much to ask? I thought. No, I replied. Frag any visitor that can't hit their STOP key.

Or so I rationalized until I downloaded Firefox and Netscape and saw that the STOP BUTTON doesn't function on Animated Pics/Sounds in said browsers once the page has loaded (as it does in IE).

That 'owever I rationalized as an oversight on *their* part that would be corrected shortly.

That was 5 years ago.

So, in addition to animated pics and sounds, I have *2* versions of my web-site and both break (to the point of atomic-annihilation -Ed) said Web no-no rules.

und I'll bet that the very fact that I 'ave 2 versions of my blog (2 different layouts at separate urls no less) very likely breaks a Web rule itself - thought I 'aven't seen it said (yet -Ed).

P.S: Good article.

I figure, a couple hundred more like it, and it may yet sink in.

see what I'm talking about here ===>

http://digital-superculture.blogspot.com

50 spongooli's says you run screaming for your sanity.

Bottom Line. I can't 'elp myself, not sure why, but I need 'elp.

Post Script: I 'aven't even added the function to actually "blog" to 2 out of 3 of my blog(s). Yet.

[Pathud]

regards,
The Avante Guardian
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Earth, Sometimes.
Extrapolate My Iguana 2006.

[Greg]

Very timely and well-written. These things apply as much to any type web design as they do to just blogging. I certainly hope my studets take the time to read your post.

[Baxter]

Top notch comments... it's not just writing well and waiting for the masses to beat down the door.

Obviously, I'm taking tip #3 to heart...

[Butch]

...kinda cool...

[Audiolathe]

What did I say about raining on parades? ;)

[seth]

you really have nothing to say or do you already know that?

[Noel]

Thanks for the list. I especially appreciated your first item, "What's the Subject". You seem to accurately lay out the tension between focus and enjoyment. I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of writing about a motley multitude of subjects that catch my interest. However, I haven't seen such promiscuousness rewarded with a sympathetic audience.