Blogs are for anoraks who couldn’t get published any other way – Janet Street Porter
There is a temptation for me while writing this to sound quite pretentious and patronising. The likelihood is I will. However you will note from the above quote that anything I may write obviously accounts for me too and therefore is self-deprecating as well as deprecating. What somebody likes about a blog varies quite a lot. When I look up blogs on irishstudentblogs.com there are certain things that will turn me off someone’s site almost immediatly. These are a couple of examples of what I think are the dos and don’ts in the blogging world.
Do spell correctly and Don’t abuse punctuation
This is pretty basic. I’m not saying that leaving out a word by accident or not spelling something properly once is a capital offence. If I spot text speak or someone over-uses apostrophes all the time I will however leave their blog and not want to come back again. Luckily pretty much everybody I’ve read is able to spell so that isn’t really a problem I encounter that often.
Don’t only talk about yourself
In my first English class at the beginning of fifth year my teacher asked us all to write down three thing that made us happy. There was a quiet shuffle as people found paper and pens, diligently going about the task. Once we were done the teacher asked a girl a name and then asked her if she had friends, family or sunny days written down in front of her. She had two out of three, the other being her favorite food. He then told people to put up their hand if they had at least one of those things down. Unsurprisingly almost, if not all, put up there hand. “The sad truth”, he said “Is most of you are boring.”
There is a certain extent to which all of us are vain, especially someone like myself who writes a blog. I put up deliberately provocative titles to blog posts to try and boost my blog stats which I religiously update everyday and every hour after I put up a post. There is a temptation when blogging to just talk about ourselves with the notion that because we find our own lives interesting then everyone else will. Unfortunately this is not the case. Unless you are insanely funny, somebody famous or somebody with superpowers (Joss Whedon for instance) then chances are you are boring. It’s your prerogative to be but if you do only write about yourself, the ups and downs of love and school and your cat then I will not read what you write.
Don’t be a tease
Don’t you hate when somebody puts up a really interesting title on their post and click into it only to find two sentences saying ‘This thing is quite interesting. What do you think? Leave me a comment!’ This may sound like an exaggeration but it really has happened to me before. I intensely dislike tiny little posts that take you ten seconds to glance. If it’s that small put it up on Facebook, don’t make me feel cheated by giving your post a hit only to find nothing of interest. I like something to be at least 500 words and at most 1000 unless it’s a subject I am really interested in.
Do make the main topic of your post obvious
These are the anti teases. You could have something really interesting written but if I see an obscure title I’m going to assume it’s shite and pass it over. If you tell me what I’m about to read I’d be more likely to give it a shot.
Do have that little something extra
Whether it’s an interesting writing style, a wicked sense of humour or new perspective on an old topic, if you say something interesting I’m going to want to read more.
