Comments on: Thoughts, Tips and Tools for Bloggers

By: Mwangi - the Displaced African

Mwangi - the Displaced African — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:54:47 +0000

Thanks man. These are absolutely phenomenal tools. The only other things I would add are:
1) Join the community to which you blog: Read and leave comments on other people’s blogs and be a member of the forums and the social bookmarking community that you service.
2) Have a short page explaining what RSS is and how it can benefit your readers – this has had mixed results but is worth mentioning.

By: Gost

Gost — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:45:13 +0000

thanks

By: Cerise

Cerise — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:39:31 +0000

Dude, I’ve officially gone wild. Thank you for a super blogging day!

By: Cerise

Cerise — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:38:11 +0000

Wow, Hash and Cow, I’ve learned my LESSON(s) today! You have both gotten me all fired up about teh blog again. Thank you!

By: Gost

Gost — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:54:53 +0000

what’s wrong with novigation?

By: nuttycow

nuttycow — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Keep it up Cerise – I’ve been blogging (badly) since about 2000 in various forms (although I’ve only been at my current address for about a year). I think it takes practice and ultimately, you’ve got to do it for *you*, not for readership. Damn, that’s very cheesy!

By: bgm

bgm — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:16:34 +0000

Thanks for the tips. Took me ~30 minutes to implement … well except the consistency bit

By: HASH

HASH — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:12:41 +0000

Nuttycow, good points.

I’ve been asked to give talks on blogging before, and I have 3 rules for blogging:

1) Consistency
2) Quality (content)
3) Commitment (over the long haul)

By: Cerise

Cerise — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:10:51 +0000

Thanks to you both for wonderful suggestions. My personal blog is absolutely cricket-worthy, Cow, because of exactly that – the thought that unless I have 500 words (or whatever – a very long entry) why bother?

I’m contemplating doing a communal blog (partially for the friendship and enrichment of it, partially to take the onus off just me to write every day) in WordPress, so these are killer sources of information, Hash. Thank you!

By: nuttycow

nuttycow — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:01:45 +0000

I think those are all very good suggestions – another two key things I’d add to the list is…

Write interesting and write often.

Let me explain… my thought is that it doesn’t really matter what you write as long as there is a call to action (something for the reader to do) or it is directly relevant to your audience. For example, if you write a technology based blog then they’re probably not going to be interested in a story about you cutting your toenails

Writing often is also important and it’s quite easy to not blog because you don’t think you have anything to write about. Not true. Your own personal view on random things is what makes you, you – therefore, why not write about them.

Of course I say this and totally fail to follow my own rules!

Oh, and making comments on other people’s blogs that interest you is also a good way of highlighting your blog (hint)