On Blogging
Advice for new bloggers
I recently got an email from someone who is thinking of starting a blog. She wondered what advice I had. And how long does blogging take, typically?
While I have many, many thoughts on this topic, I also am curious to hear what YOU have to say.
So, how about it?
What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of starting a blog?
What do you wish someone had told YOU?
And how long do you spend blogging, on average?
I’ll compile your answers (with credit, of course) along with my own in an “Advice for new bloggers” post.
Catch more of Jenny Blackburn’s humorous anecdotes on being a mom, a woman, and a whole lot crazy at Absolutely Bananas.
If you have questions, anecdotes, or topics for “On Blogging,” email jenny[@]seattlemomblogs[dot]com.
Phew! This could be quite the post
Unfortunately my advice could be summarized as “be careful.” Don’t post when you’re angry. Be aware that there’s something called the Way Back Machine and your posts could be saved elsewhere for eternity. You often can’t take something back once it’s been published, especially if someone has you on a feed reader. Be careful of posting personal information like names and specifics of where you live. Be aware if you have your own domain name that info can be looked up anyway! Don’t post full size photos of your children. Don’t talk about anyone in a way that you wouldn’t say to their face — they might find it someday. Don’t take comments personally, particularly if it’s from someone you don’t know. And lots of people you don’t know may read your site. Not everyone on the internet are friendly. Although many are!
Sorry if that’s all a downer.. I’ll stop now
I’m going to second what Carrie said about not taking comments personally. When you put yourself out there people are going to have opinions about what you write. It just goes with the territory. So don’t get too worked up about negative comments. And don’t comment back and get into an argument. As the author you need to stay above the fray. You look immature and overly sensitive if you get defensive. Often your other readers will defend you anyway.
Also, don’t judge the success of your blog by the number of comments you get. A lot more people read your blog than they do comment. A LOT. Just remember that whether you are getting feedback in your comments or not you ARE touching lives and what you write makes a difference.
Depending on the nature of your blog, I think it’s good to be honest and real. People appreciate it when we let ourselves be vulnerable. As Carrie said, obviously you don’t want to spew out a bunch of stuff when you are angry or emotional because you will regret it later. You also don’t want to say anything incriminating or that you would be embarassed for a future employer to read. But within reasonable parameters I think readers get more out of your writing if you’re willing to let down your guard and be real with them.
There’s a lot you could say on this subject but I’ll shut my trap for now and let someone else weigh in!
I completely agree with what Carrie and Susan have said … no need to repeat excellent advice.
The only thing I would add is figure out what your intentions are with blogging. Do you want to be a part of a larger blogging community? Then realize you need to get active, leave comments, participate in carnivals and be patient. Or do you intend to blog solely to keep friends and family updated?
All of this goes along with having a theme or a mission statement in mind when you blog. What is your purpose? Who is your target audience? Sure it can change and evolve over time, but at least it will get you started.
Lastly? Spell check. Read out loud what you write to check from grammar and other awkward phrases.
Above all, enjoy what you are doing. Otherwise, why blog?!
And you can tell I didn’t grammar check that comment
!! from = for
I blame it on having kids needing me right now
!!
Great advice from everyone else. The only thing I would add is to set aside a specific time for blogging. Perhaps even allot a certain amount of time for blogging per day/per week and stick to it. As most likely once the individual starts s/he will quickly become obsessed with blogging and all the great blogs out there. Inevitably it will take up more time then initially planned and can be stressful and/or take away from family and other time. All that to say , enjoy but be careful.
Definitely follow the advice above. I’ll repeat: decide what your goal is. What’s your reason for blogging? Mine was therapy at first: a rough year or two at work and in the family, looking to journaling as an outlet. It’s been that and more. The community of bloggers has been fabulous. I’ve been adamant about not using names or recognizable full-face pix, too, even though my kid tease me about it.
I just wanted to mention that it’s possible to keep your info off of the Way Back Machine using a robots.txt file at the root of your domain. All documents from your domain will be removed from the Wayback Machine and at will tell the Internet Archive’s crawler not to crawl your site in the future. Just by adding these two lines in the text file…
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
If you cannot put a robots.txt file up, submit a request to wayback2@archive.org.