So you want to blog

  • My god­son Nicode­mus has started blog­ging and asked me if I had any words of advice. On this sub­ject (as with so many oth­ers), there are oth­ers that would have much more wis­dom to offer, but since they are hum­ble enough to stay quiet on the sub­ject, I’ll go ahead and give my idea of the tips I think are worth con­sid­er­ing for new blog­gers or those who are think­ing about start­ing up. I’m com­ing up on my third year, which makes me Methus­lah in blog-years, appar­ently. So Methus­lah says:

    • Just do it. I’ve talked to peo­ple that want to blog but think some­how there’s some rocket sci­ence involved. (I’d have thought a brief visit to this blog would be enough to dis­abuse them of that, but oh well.) If you want to start, go to Blogspot – link HERE. It doesn’t cost any­thing, and you can be blog­ging in ten min­utes. If you find that you’re lov­ing it, you may want to look into get­ting your­self a cus­tomized Weblog (which is what this one is) to equip you with some dif­fer­ent bells and whis­tles. But Blogspot will give you every­thing you need to begin.
    • You’re big­ger than you think. One of the weird things about the blo­gos­phere is that it gives you a mega­phone that can poten­tially reach across oceans and con­ti­nents. How do they find you? Well, I’ll get to that at the end. But suf­fice it to say, you’ll want to remem­ber that how­ever small you may con­sider your­self, your words may go any­where the inter­net reaches. That’s enough to keep me fact-checking (as I should’ve done back here when I con­fused the Dan­ish and the Dutch and was cor­rected by a Dan­ish com­menter. Oops.). It takes two sec­onds to go to Wikipedia and though they’re not per­fect, they have list­ings for almost every­thing. (And by the way, don’t for­get resources like Ortho­doxWiki for Ortho-specific issues.)
    • Want some num­bers? Blog­gers seem a lit­tle shy to share their num­bers, but I don’t know who I’m try­ing to impress. It’s easy to track your traf­fic — I think Blogspot has a way, and Word­Press (which I use) does too. In the past week this blog got 765 pageviews by 310 vis­i­tors, about half of which are new and half return­ing view­ers. I wasn’t look­ing at my num­bers when I started back in August 2004, but I know that I used to aver­age about 700–800 vis­i­tors a month, and I’ve trended up in the last year to around 1000/month, so hooray. But lest I get too cocky, Instapun­dit (to pick one of the most pop­u­lar blogs) has been get­ting about 177,000 hits per DAY these days. Sooo … room to grow.
    • Let’s be care­ful out there. Related to hav­ing that big mega­phone, you have to be care­ful what you say about a per­son, group or church that you know. You may not think it could ever get back to them, but it could very well. Not to say that you need to de-personalize every­thing, but you may want to avoid the temp­ta­tion to use the blog to vent if it could embar­rass someone.
    • When it comes to con­tent, small can be big. As far as sub­ject mat­ter goes, don’t think that every post has to be epic in scope. Per­son­ally, I love newsy lit­tle items, recipes, quick exchanges, a line from a joke. It’s all good.
    • How often do you want to post? It’s worth con­sid­er­ing that if you only post once every cou­ple weeks, you’ll have trou­ble build­ing traf­fic. On the other hand, if you promise your­self you’ll post every day, some other respon­si­bil­i­ties will suf­fer. I think my aver­age is about twice a week, but I’m not sure.
    • Think about craft a lit­tle bit. The bet­ter you can com­mu­ni­cate, the more you’ll be able to put into the blog and the more peo­ple will get out of it. So be a lit­tle pro­fes­sional with it. Check your spelling at dictionary.com. Look for inter­est­ing syn­onyms in thesaurus.com rather than using the same words over and over. And — here’s the big­gie — be a tough edi­tor! Do you have to include that whole anec­dote about your Aunt Eulalie just to get to the point, or does it get in the way? Or is the anec­dote the only good part, in which case you can yank the rest? Chances are peo­ple are look­ing at your blog when there’s some­thing else they should be doing. Be kind. Get to the point. Try to be brief. (Yes, this is one I work on. You should imag­ine how long I’d go on if I weren’t work­ing at it.)
    • The blo­gos­phere is about shar­ing — part 1: Link to oth­ers – The blo­gos­phere is at its most amaz­ing when infor­ma­tion and opin­ions are being shared in the way that the inter­net has made pos­si­ble. So though it’s tempt­ing to want to be self-referential, think about link­ing to other sto­ries and other blogs. It’s not inva­sive and it’s not pla­gia­rism; it’s what it’s all about. But do remem­ber to give the orig­i­na­tor the credit.
    • The blo­gos­phere is about shar­ing — part 2: Build your blogroll – There are two approaches to the blogroll. Some peo­ple are very exclu­sive and only include a hand­ful of the blogs they con­sider worth not­ing. Per­son­ally, I’m of the “one big happy fam­ily” school. For a while, I was try­ing to include every Ortho-blog I could find, but our num­bers have been grow­ing, and I’m con­stantly com­ing across ones I knew noth­ing about. But whether you want to be exclu­sive or all-inclusive, spend some time finess­ing your blogroll. It’s how you find oth­ers and how they find you.
    • The blo­gos­phere is about shar­ing — part 3: Com­ment! — The best way to start get­ting more traf­fic to your blog is also the most friendly: visit other blogs and don’t be stingy with your encour­ag­ing and con­ver­sa­tional com­ments. It’s all very well to be a “lurker” if you really have noth­ing to say, but once you’ve got a blog of your own, you real­ize how even a short “Amen” or “Good job!” warms your lit­tle heart. And yes, it makes you curi­ous to find out who’s read­ing. (In case it needs to be said, crit­i­cal com­ment­ing should be done care­fully and respect­fully or not at all.)
    • The blo­gos­phere is about shar­ing — part 4: Go on read­about — Try to get out there and read other blogs. Some peo­ple like RSS feed that noti­fies you if there are new posts. My sys­tem is that I’ve set up fold­ers in my book­marks so I can open up groups of blogs in tabs. Some are friends that I check in with, some are pro­fes­sional, and I try to get some new ones in there. And look to see what other peo­ple are doing. There’s lots to learn.
    • Get onto search engines — You’ll also increase traf­fic if you get your blog listed in search engines like Google and Yahoo. I’m not very savvy about all this, so I asked Greg for his advice. These last three points are his:
      • The basics: You can insert your site to Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ (an open direc­tory) at these links. Check with other major search engines (handy list here) as well.
      • Write as if search engines mat­tered. “A beginner’s guide to Ortho­doxy” is a much bet­ter head­line (in terms of match­ing what some­one might actu­ally search for online) than “Back when I was 12, this is what Fr. Good­e­nough from St. Bib­bity­boo told me about Orthodoxy.”
      • Look into some basic search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) tech­niques. This isn’t so much blog­ging 101 as it is blog­ging 201, but it can make a big dif­fer­ence in your search engine rank­ings. Using Blog­ger? Great four-part arti­cle starts here. Using Word­Press?, Some free plu­g­ins here. If you’re on another blog­ging plat­form, there are prob­a­bly free add-ons as well – check Google.

      I think that’s all I can think of. If there are any more sea­soned blog­gers with more, please chime in.


      Related posts:

      1. Blog-free zone till Tuesday
      2. Puffy golden blog entry
      3. Stand back. I’m thinking
      4. Blog round-up
      5. Blog-o-rama

      June 19th, 2007 | Grace | 9 Comments |

    9 Responses and Counting...

    • Nicode­mus 06.19.2007

      Grace — this is a great reply! Alas, it is still a lonely endeavor, but I have already applied some of your words of wis­dom to my blog — hope­fully, I will be blog­ging with the best of them soon — what a good God­mama you are!

      Seems inter­est­ing to blog about blog­ging, like there should be a tongue twister in there somewhere…“How many blogs would a blog­ger blog if a blog­ger would blog blogs” or “the big bad blog had bits of big­ger bad blogs on its back”

      OK, I’m get­ting in too deep here — I think I’m get­ting water-blogged (I keep this up and I may actu­ally shew peo­ple away!).

      Thanks, Grace!

    • Deb

      These are great! How do you fig­ure out who is a return­ing vis­i­tor and who is new? 700 vis­i­tors in the week! Wow. I’m lucky to get 150.

    • s-p

      Wow Grace, I didn’t even know about all that stuff! THanks!
      s-p, another near methuse­lah but spo­radic poster

    • Grace

      Deb,
      Word­press Reports, which is what I look at, has them bro­ken out sep­a­rately. Which is impor­tant, because there’s a big dif­fer­ence between pageviews (hits) and unique vis­i­tors. But before I say any more, I’m going to talk with Greg and make sure I’ve got my facts right. This one might be worth a sep­a­rate blog entry.

    • Mimi

      You are amaz­ing, I also didn’t know half this stuff!

    • Grace

      Nicode­mus:
      By the way, I for­got to respond about how funny a word “blog” is — def­i­nitely! I know a guy who just refuses to con­sider start­ing one of his own because it’s just too silly of a word. That’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle extreme, but I don’t blame any­body for just think­ing it’s weird to say. Maybe we could start the next hip trend in New Media and call it a “schlork” so that ‘blog’ would sound bet­ter by comparison?

    • Word­mama

      I’ve heard St. Bibbityboo’s has a world-class schlork-fest going on right now. Or is that just too sply­bert for real people?

    • Deb

      I don’t have Word­Press Reports. I won­der if that because I have a free account? In any event, you seem to have a dif­fer­ent type of WP account because I don’t see “word­press” on your blog address.

      “schlork” now that is pretty funny!

    • Grace

      WM:
      Def­i­nitely too splybert.

      Some­one should make a study of what sounds have to go together to make a funny word.

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