Someone once asked me about my blogging routine. To be sure, blogging is not exactly mainstream (although I argue that it’s becoming more so.) Sadly, a lot of people don’t know what blogs are. Even more have never read one. I’ve been blogging really for about a year and I’ve been Gung-ho about it for six months. So maybe I’ve learned a little.

Here’s how I do it:

Whenever I have a good idea (like bot week), I start a blog draft. I currently have 12 or 13 drafts hanging out in my Wordpress. The drafts start out as lists/outlines with few complete sentences. Then I flesh them out when I have a spare moment. Then I add links. Then I decide which draft will be published. Then add any transitions, humorous rewordings, clever titles, etc. I then I read and re-read them. Then I read them out loud. Then I add pictures. Then I click “publish”! Then I edit four or five more times. It’s actually a lot more work than I like to admit (although I just did.) If people knew how much time really went into this silly blog, they would think I was pretty weird and my reputation as an incredibly macho yet brilliant scholar-athlete might be tarnished. There goes my rep. :(

For a better blog: try discussing the blog topic with a few of your friends beforehand. For better blog topics, be sure to be inspired through interactions with other people: Get out and do stuff. Listen to the news. Listen to NPR. Watch funny people. When you write: Be funny. Be flippant. Be controversial. Be clever. Break your content over a series of articles so people have to come back for the conclusion. Again, get out and do stuff; unless your imagination is amazing, it’s really hard to have an exciting blog if you lead a boring life.

Oh, you must enable blog comments (it’s ok to moderate them to prevent spam/objectionable material, but for the love, turn them on!) For one, blogs are more fun when people comment. It’s about the community and the conversation, not just your blatherings. Blogs without comments suck.

The best blogs still need readers. You need to get people to come to your site, so you have to promote the heck out of your blog.

Promoting your Blog:

  • submit your site to search engines (Google) and blog aggregators
  • tell everyone about it
  • google for blogs on similar topics and post a comment along with a link back to your blog entry
  • get friends with blogs to list you in their blogrolls
  • blog about interesting stuff frequently so people want to come back
  • don’t talk about software bots for days at a time
  • create supporting accounts (with back links) at Myspace, flickr, etc.

Clearly I can do things to make my blog better too. Any ideas for me?