Blogging Tips #1

The Top Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Blogging

No. 1 - No Theme to Your Blog

Most people who read a specific blog on a consistent basis do so because they are interested in the topic - whether it is your personal life events, your stand on a political issue, or what colour of underwear you prefer to wear. If you do not stick to your theme for the majority of the entries in your blog, you will lose readership. If you are trying to profit financially from your blog via advertisers, this is money right out of your pocket.]

No. 2 - Unexplained Time Gaps in Your Blog

The unit of time between blog entries is entirely your choice and does not matter nearly as much as consistency in keeping to your schedule, be it hourly, daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. If you stray too far from your set blog posting expectations, visitors may well think you have left the world of blogging behind. If you need to take a break, post an entry to that effect. This repercussions of making this mistake are proportional to the length of time between your blog entries - if you blog hourly, an occasional missed entry will be forgiven by most, but if you blog less frequently than once per week, do not let time pass by without an explanation.

No. 3 - Blogging About Your Workplace Without Permission

Many corporations now have official bloggers, where blogging about the company is part of someone's job description (hopefully someone who enjoys blogging or it will not succeed). However, if you blog about your company for your own reasons (be it on your own time or on company time), be aware that you are taking a big risk. Even if you do not say anything derogatory or reveal personal/business secrets in your blog, your company may not appreciate being exposed in any manner on the Internet. There are some famous cases of people losing their jobs over blogging and the incidents are increasing in number, so be careful if you choose this route (and do the right thing and not blog on company time).

No. 4 - Straying Too Far From Your Blog's Theme

Although there are people who will read any blog they see, most have favorites that they visit regularly for any number of reasons - they like your style, your content, your relevancy, your timing, your personality, etc. Any changes to your blog could lose you visitors, but the biggest culprit is the theme or general topic. Realize as well that unless you monitor your posted comments carefully, some may subtly change your theme or cause it to take on a "club-members-only" appearance, which will lose you readers.

No. 5 - Involvement in Blogging Spam

An increasing trend of setting up dozens or hundreds of blogs with links to commercial sites to increase search engine position for the linked businesses has become a huge problem. Google and other large search engines, which do not currently have posted consequences for blog spam, will probably feel the need to add such clauses to their Terms of Services and start banning suspect bloggers. Use conventional SEO methods; don't resort to blog spam to get traffic to your websites, or consequences could be implemented that will hurt not just you, but legitimate bloggers using, but not abusing, the link system.

No. 6 - Ignoring Comments Posted to Your Blog

If you choose to allow people to post comments to your blog, be warned that this could become a huge commitment. As well, there are two other risks. It is only polite to respond to all comments in some fashion in your blog (or via some other form of communication such as an email), but if you choose not to, you risk being spammed by those you ignore. Spam can be dealt with, but more importantly, without the back-and-forth of discussion about comments, you risk your blog becoming a virtual chat room that some visitors will not find appealing. Blogs are about opinions, so do not be afraid to comment on your comments.

No. 7 - Posting Libelous Material on Your Blog

Although we would all like to think that freedom of speech should apply everywhere, if you insult the wrong person in your blog, be aware of the risks. If you have someone who is not happy with something you have said, they may go to considerable lengths to discover who you are and who are the people you are talking (you'd hoped anonymously) about. The consequences can range from lawsuits, jobs lost, reputations ruined, relationships and friendships ended, embarrassment to innocent parties, all the way down to how you feel about yourself as a person. It may be fun for a while, but in the end, it rarely works out well for the blogger.

No. 8 - Using Too Much Insider or Regional Talk

Remember that your audience is worldwide and many of them are not as computer savvy as you may think. Regional slang, little known acronyms, or words that you have coined from a comment written eons ago may not be understood by visitors. If they cannot understand what you are saying, they will not read your blog regularly. Of course, if your blog is geared to a specific theme where you only wish to have an audience who is "in the know", go ahead and use insider lingo, but make sure that is your purpose and accept that your audience may not grow to be are large as you wish. Blogging is about building communities online and sometimes that involves teaching others about your interests to expand that community.

No. 9 - Writing Way Too Much

Some people like to read long, descriptive blogs, but the vast majority of readers want a quick read. This is particularly important if you are blogging about politics. With an election year (2004) in the United States, political blogging has exploded, but something is missing from it. Political blogs that are personal in nature are one thing, but the proliferation of political blogging by traditional journalists has been disappointing. Some are trying to imitate a form of communication they are not experienced writing, and many fail in trying to impersonate a traditional blog by filling it with details such as who they were having coffee with at which coffee chain when they overheard something a campaign worker said.

No. 10 - Not Realizing That the Internet Has a Permanent Memory

The last of the Top Ten Mistakes, but perhaps the most serious mistake a blogger can make, is to forget that whatever you post on the Internet has the potential to become immortal. Because people place your blog on their favorite places, copy your blog onto their hard drive, quote it on their blog, and print it out, whatever you say on the Internet has the potential to never go away. The danger is that you have no idea who might be doing any one of those things with your blog. Additionally, remember that your blog may be sitting in computer caches all over the world. Be sure you are clear about what you want to say and how you want to say it, because it is entirely possible that someone, somewhere will keep a copy. If you are at all concerned, be certain not to use an email address you need for another reason or to reveal personal information. If you are worried, change your IP address as often as you feel necessary.Blogs originally began as web logs - journals or logs with a theme that just happened to be posted on the Internet. Then they became "we blogs" and eventually just "blogs", but blogs are in danger of losing that indescribable something that made them so intriguing. A big reason for the proliferation of blogs was the fact that anyone can blog for free - no need to buy special software, no cost to have your blog on the Internet if you didn't want to. Now that big business and politics are involved, the blog is in danger of disappearing as a unique form of expression. Try to avoid the above mistakes and help keep blogging a part of individual expression, not just another step along the way to further commercialization of the Internet.

And yes, this blog doesn't have a particular theme (but I do have 2 blogs that do) and this entry isn't particularly short, but these are tips for you and me so oh well!