(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)
I read a lot of blogs about blogging. Frankly, it’s hard not to since there are so few blogs about just “stuff.” Sometimes it seems that 99% of the blogs out there just tell you how to blog. Isn’t there another good topic to blog about? Doesn’t anyone blog about yurts or homesteading or cooking or politics or the random thoughts of a deranged redneck?
[Dave: appropriate spot for editorial comment. -Bob]
{Bob: Nah, I’m going just keep feeding out the rope… -Dave}
One of my favorite reads on blogging about blogging is Copyblogger. The crew over there is constantly adding posts that can help a blogger immeasurably in improving skills. I read them daily, even if I don’t have time to read anything else.
One of their posts a while back was titled “How to Constantly Create Compelling Content.” Now, far be it from me, a lowly, dumb, redneck, boiled peanut salesman with a blog sporting a poor Alexa score, to correct those guys. When you are the top blog on blogging you gotta be doing something right, and they are.
While I agree totally with both the post title AND its message, I think its great advice for bloggers who have been around a while and are tweaking. For the beginner who doesn’t have a clue how to get stuff read however, I’d suggest a shorter title/topic:
How to Constantly Create Compelling Content
Blogs that have been around a while might have a need for instruction on how to create compelling content, but beginning bloggers need to create content, and then more create content, and then create even more content.
Beginning bloggers, listen up… there are three reasons, two technical, one “artistic,” for y’all to create, create, create and not sweat the “compelling” part… for now.
Most reading this ARE beginners drawn by the site title (A piece of genius in my less than humble opinion. Titles count ). Commenters here are a whole different group, for the most part.
- Technical reason #1. You decided to blog because you want folks to read what you have to say when they visit your site, right? Regardless of whether you want to share your profound thoughts or want to sell somebody something, folks need to visit your site, or more precisely, you need to get folks to visit your site. That means having something to find. Google, Bing, et al don’t do well searching the same ol’ static web pages with no new content over and over. Like any monster, they must be fed fresh, raw meat… and lots of it, so… WRITE DAMMIT!
- Technical reason #2. It is a sad but true fact that, despite Steve Jobs best efforts, so far computers don’t have emotions (I’m not sure Jobs did either). Search engines only “read” blog content in a technical way. Is your post slug SEO friendly? How many links do you have in a post? Do you have primary keywords in your title, first paragraph, and post description? THAT a search engine reads, but a search engine doesn’t give a rats ass if you write like Louis L’Amour, Ann Rice, or Bozo the Clown…it sees how much you write, not how you write.
A lousy fact but a fact just the same, is that to search engines it is quantity over quality, and you have to be found before you can be read, so…WRITE DAMMIT!
- Artistic reason #1. While the old adage “practice makes perfect” is bullshit (Practice makes permanent. PERFECT practice makes perfect.), practice DOES help improve skills…any skills…so guess what that means if you want to be a better writer? You guessed it…WRITE DAMMIT!
There ya have it… the be all, end all, A-#1 rule for beginning bloggers… and sorry I was so bossy with the WRITE DAMMIT! stuff. Not.
Robert Hayles is a semi-retired Luddite,
who actually wished Y2K had been as bad as advertised.
Bob's hobbies include fishing, homesteading, alternative housing (yurts),
cooking, annoying politicians by constantly asking them, "Is that constitutional?",
reminding them who they work for, and suing them when they don't get the message.
In his spare time, Bob blogs while
hoping to someday take us back to 1850. Meanwhile he's happy
