A Beginners View on the First Weeks of Blogging and Beyond
One of the first post on this blog was The Top 5 things to do Before You Launch Your Own Blog. Since I now have a few more posts under my blogging belt do I feel adequately comfortable writing the follow up if you will.
After having installed, designed and tuned your blog are you ready to actually start blogging. The question is where to start. As explained in the before-mentioned article did I after looking at a couple of other blogs first posts decide to make a welcome post including why I wanted to blog, what I intended blogging about and how I imagined doing it. Not only is this is a great help to your first visitors. It can also help serve as a guideline for the following posts as well as a reminder to yourself of your initial intentions later on. Off course should your strategy not be set in stone, but continuously develop. However you do need a starting point and one written down and put up for everyone to see is a good one.
As a logical next step could be developing and expanding your initial thoughts, but it can also be picking up the subject that turning you on to blogging in the first place. Whatever it is should it be substantial enough to serve as one of more pillars on which the future of your blog is built. If writing pillar posts just doesn’t come naturally at this point there is nothing wrong with waiting and instead writing shorter less substantial posts, but the sooner pillar post are added the stronger the foundation for future growth will be. After building some content to make sure that your visitors have an incentive to come and to come back is it a good idea to start thinking in links. The more you link to others the bigger the chance that you will get noticed. If you get noticed before creating content it will not bring you much though so think content first and links second.
If your intention is to communicate with the world rather than just communicating to the world you should keep that in mind from that beginning. Not only should your blog be set up to accommodate it, you should also consider it every time you post. Posting on something relevant to others, asking questions, taking a strong stand on an issue, asking for help or feedback and linking extensively to other bloggers in your niche are all things that will help you get noticed and help starting your own (sub)community. If you also spend time actually reading the comments and replying to relevant ones then you will help promote it even more. Going beyond your own blog is also a good idea. Commenting on especially those posts that you link to will help you get integrated in other communities and will help linking everything together.
Reading other blogs and especially those about blogging (not to mention everything else relevant to the subject you are blogging about) is very educational and should be continued also after you start writing yourself. Basically you can never finish learning. You can however also become so overwhelmed and influenced by what others write that it is hard to write your own posts and finding your own style. Therefore is a good idea to take a step back on occasion and consider what you have to say and how you want to say it. One of the worst mistakes you can make is trying to emulate someone else. Learning from other bloggers and picking what you like most about other blogs is good, but only as long as you don’t overdo it. You have to make your own contribution and it has to be obvious that this is your blog and unlike any other blog out there in one way or another.
Just like you can never outlearn when it comes to content you should never stop learning about presentation. Your design and set up should be under constant consideration. After initial set up, should you however leave it alone long enough to be able to properly evaluate it, but sticking to it regardless of your own feeling about it, the feedback you get and what you learn from others just doesn’t make sense. The value of your content is always emphasized by those writing about blogging, but if you present it badly then it won’t matter if it is the greatest content in the world. This is especially true is your intention goes beyond just churning out content and moving on to the next item. If you intent to actually communicate with people you will not only have to make sure that they can find and read your content, but also that they can interact with you and each other without having to jump through too many hoops.
Related is the matter of what you write about. If you started with a welcoming post outlining what you will be writing about then stick to what you wrote. You can always define themes and subjects more or less narrow, but it has to within the range of what your visitors expect. Starting to write about something completely different will only throw people off and reveal that you didn’t think things through before starting your blog. Obviously is nothing set in stone and your blog is free to develop, but it has to be a logical and natural progression based both on the content and your audience. There is a good chance that you either defined your blog too narrowly or too broadly and that you have to adjust it, just as you may find that people are only interested in parts of what you write about or that they want a broader range of subjects. Having enabled feedback loops will help you adjust, just as you obviously continuously have to develop the feel for what is right and where to go.
How often you post and how long the posts should be seems to be one of the most popular themes among bloggers. I guess it is one of those inspirational sources that will never dry out. My take on it is that you should post as often as you are able to post well enough and long enough to make your point in a way which is understandable. Some blogs pick a schedule and form and stick with it, which have the advantage that you know what to expect while others have no recognizable pattern which have the advantage that no one have false expectations when visiting their blog. As you can see from the posting dates have I chosen the latter. Regarding the length of the post do I, as I tend to write more about the points I cover, try to cover less points in my posts and instead of 10 points I find myself settling for 5. Still I will rather read and write about 5 valid points than 10 of which 5 are fillers (not to speak about lists consisting of even more points!).
When deciding what to write, how to write and how often you write can your blogs statistics perhaps help. Seeing where people enter and where they leave, what they look at and how much time they spend, just as where they come from and where they go can tell you something about what you are doing right and wrong. The problem is that it mostly isn’t perfectly obvious why things are as they are. If you for example see that people only look at one page before leaving could you conclude that the content isn’t good enough. It could however just as well mean that your visitors couldn’t figure out where to go next or it simply means that they come with the false expectations because your headlines or the links to you are misleading. Statistics is thus something you have to be careful about getting obsessed with. Building in feedback loops, interacting with others, and constantly learning and tweaking is necessary companions to any statistics package no matter how sophisticated it is.
As you can see is blogging almost a science (or an art form even) when you start looking at everything involved. However it doesn’t need to be that way. You can still simply set up a blog and start blogging without reflecting too much about it. Just because I tend to think about everything I do does it not mean that you have to. Furthermore is this another example of one of those posts based on the premise of doing as I suggest rather than doing what I do as I just don’t seem to be able to follow even my own good advice. There is however no doubt in my mind that those blogs that enjoy the most success are those where the blogger not only does the math, but also actually acts on it. Hence is it a goal of mine to start putting my money where my mouth is and I suggest you do to. I would love to hear what comes from it so don’t be shy and comment.
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