Friday, August 26, 2005

Blogging about Blogging

Simon World has is giving advice to new bloggers. The guys at QandO have read it and are adding comments.

Some of his advice is great. Blogging is a random event. You can never tell how people are going to react. You will spend lots of time on it even though 99% of what you write will never be seen by anyone outside of a small circle of people. Most of them won't even bother to comment.

A few pieces of good advice:
  • Comments do not have any connection to post quality. Most people feel no need to comment on a post if they can't add or correct something.
  • Chances are you will never be one of the big boys. Blog for yourself. I have seen people complain about how few readers they get, when they get more readers a day than I get in a week.
  • Put effort in the look and location of your blog. I ran a stock Blogger format for the first six months here. Nobody came back. You aren't a real blogger until your blog has your unique fingerprints to it. I will probably move off blogger eventually, because blogger has Noob stigma, but right now I don't know what I want to move to. I only want to move once if I can help it.
  • Build friendships with other bloggers, if you have a small readership then get to know them.
  • As Signal11 once proved on Slashdot, people react better to heat than light. If you want to shed light, expect to have a long slog ahead.

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