I'm a happy blogger. But it took some time to get here. I'll spare you the sordid history and get down to the good stuff. Please bear in mind, this advice is not meant for people who want to brand themselves perfectly or get into top rankings fast (I hear the best advice for that is to bare some scandalous body part, and I'm not into that). Blogging can be hard work, so here is my advice to make it enjoyable.
1. Write what you want, when you want*. Write for any old reason. You discovered a new recipe? Share it! You hate your neighbor's taste in music? Let us know. You convinced hip-hop is the ultimate expression of post-modern deconstructionism?
Me too! Posting pictures of your dog is always fun. Don't feel like posting for a few days, weeks? Don't. *But check in from time to time, your readers want to be sure they don't need to delete you from their feed reader. If you are short on time - you can always invite a guest blogger to share something, or at least post a pic or some links you like.
2. Forget metrics. Focus on relationships. Quit looking at your stats. Wondering what appeals to those random readers from Thailand isn't helping your psyche. Don't tailor your posts for keywords or topics, unless of course, you feel like writing about them. Besides, it never ever turns out the way you think. The posts I write in a few minutes can often generate more interest than the posts I try to craft specially, editing for days. The reason? Blogging is a dialogue. People like to finish your sentences, add their thoughts. If you present a thesis, they might be interested, but may not have much to contribute or have already nodded off to bed. But write theses anyway, if it makes you happy. Your readers can skip them and wait for something else.
3. Have faith in yourself. There is something to be said for blind faith. You don't need a reason to blog. This is the Number One excuse I hear from people who say, "Oh I wish I had a blog." As if something other than their perfectionism was stopping them! Plus, blogging anonymously is great for those of you who are worried about it getting you fired. But once you take the leap, you don't freak if you don't have a finely-honed topic. Trust that eventually you will find a voice. Trust that if you never find a voice, you may not need one. When answering the question, "So, what's your blog about?" I usually offer some rambling answer expressing my uncertainty as to what it is about, exactly. Some days I feel like I should try harder to drill down on a topic, but most of the time I am happy with the freedom I've given myself.
4. Share the Love with Other Bloggers. Take the focus off yourself. Spend quality time on other blogs you like, comment, get to know the writers.
Go to Tweet-ups. I attended my first Tweet-up (or Tweet 'em Up, as I like to say) last week. It was great to meet some of the online peeps offline - and I realized that blogging is best used as a means whereby to connect with other humans on genuine levels, not as a surrogate for meaningful relationships. Emailing, oddly enough, is also a good way to connect "offline" with bloggers you like. There is much more of a personal connection via email rather than blog post comments or Twitter messages.
5. Be authentic. Share yourself. Admit your flaws. It makes you interesting, and normal. Quite honestly, bloggers who seem to have all their shit together can appear untouchable and off-putting. In that spirit, if you totally screw something up or have second thoughts about something you've already blogged about, try not to delete it or re-edit it, but write a new post explaining why you were wrong. There is something available in blogging that I think can re-set technology from presenting images of perfection (via ultra-edited music, videos, photos, etc.) to the real and raw humanity presented by the amateur writer, singer, photographer. Tech is for everyone now - so its simplification is accompanied by an absence of over-processing. It is about experimentation and democratization. In my mind that's a step in the right direction.
6. Set your boundaries. Blogging doesn't require you to bleed. Some things are best left unsaid. I share a lot in my blog, but there are some things I'll probably never reveal to most people. That might sound rather intense and cryptic - but my life is not an open book, and some things are sacred. It's okay to forgo shock value for the sake of personal sanity. People will still like you even if you aren't the most scandalous person in the room.
7. Ignore the Crazies. If you are a blogger, people will find a reason to hate you no matter what. I sometimes blog on contentious topics that can start intense debate and some people resort to name-calling. Oddly enough, my post on
safety measures for bike riding has probably garnered the harshest comments to date! The point is - there are some ill-adjusted people looking for fights and the best thing to do is let them be.
Be a happy blogger. Listen to your heart when it comes to what you should write about. Stop worrying that it is going to lose you your job, your friends, your family. If it does, would you really want to work there or be friends with those people? Not so much. Blogging is a refinement process. You dump your thoughts, get feedback, and I think it is incredibly freeing.
I've shared this Socrates quote before, "An unexamined life is not worth living." Well, I'm convinced blogging is the best way to examine life. Ergo, an un-blogged life is not worth living.
Start a blog already. Need convincing? Email me for support. milena@quietthethunder.com
They care about you. Therefore, if they don't know you, they don't care about what you've written. Well, this is just a theory based entirely on my personal experience, so bear with me.
