How to Start (and KEEP) a Blog
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It happens to the best of us. We start a blog with every intention of keeping it up, and then things get in the way and we forget it. Maybe you don’t know what to write. Maybe you just don’t have time… many things come into play. Here are some excellent tips to help you get started, and stay focused.
- Decide what it’s about If you’re writing for a particular audience, write what that audience wants to read. If you’re trying to reach out to D&D fans, don’t start writing about the Civil War. Only write about D&D and related topics. If you’re going for a more general audience, research what you’re going to update about and see if it’s already been blogged to death. Everyone blogs about politics, so stay away from it, unless your story is less than 12 hours old.
- Don’t be concerned about comments. Just because someone doesn’t comment on an entry, that doesn’t mean people aren’t reading it, it most likely means they didn’t have anything to say about it. I’ve read tons of articles and blogs that I’ve never commented on, because I felt everything that needed to be said had been said in the entry itself, or was already in the comments. This doesn’t mean completely ignore comments – if no one ever comments on your blog, that almost certainly means no one is reading. I prefer to have comments disabled on my LJ, so I don’t have to worry about it. Instead, I let my readers comment me by email.
- Let readers know when you’re gone. If you’re going on vacation and won’t be updating for a while, let your readers know. They may think that you’ve abandoned the blog and didn’t update about it, and remove you from their RSS subscriptions. This will decrease the number of readers of your blog.
- Make sure you like your blog If you don’t like the way your blog looks, or your URL, change it. If you think there’s something wrong with it, there probably is. I’ve gone through this myself, and I changed the look of my previous journals countless times before I became completely happy with it. However, you may just think other people don’t like your look, so you need to get opinions. If you change the look of your blog, people may stop reading due to lack of familiarity.
- Get a life Instead of worrying about what your next update will be about – get out and do something. If you just sit on the computer all day and tweak with your blog, it’s going to be a very boring read. I’ve learned that the less time you spend worrying about your blog, the more content you’ll have to write about. But make sure it’s interesting, because quantity does not equal quality.
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