If everyone waited until the end of their careers to share their wisdom and reflections, we wouldn’t have any of Katie Price’s autobiographies. Not one! I may be a blog rookie (blookie), but I am a (former) professional, now an admin monkey – albeit a monkey with Kong-sized dreams! - who blogs on the company’s time, so I feel every bit as as qualified as Jordan to dish out unsolicited opinions. With 22 posts under my belt, and three more posts on another blog that enjoys readership in quadruple figures (4 is sort of a quadruple figure), I’ve had plenty of time to make mistakes – and learn from them! Won’t you join me as we slink through my top 1001 blogging tips? Along the way, you might learn something you didn’t know about the US presidential contenders!
- Blogging is a big commitment. A blog is like a vampire - it needs constant blood or else it withers and turns to dust! Or, to use a different analogy, it is like pretty much any living thing requiring regular nourishment. You wouldn’t buy a pet hamster, shove it in your PC and then leave it there, would you? I seriously doubt it!
- If your vampire is dying and you can’t get hold of human blood, substitute the blood of rats and cats! That’s an analogy for posting stuff from someone else’s blog and suffixing a pithy line of commentary, possibly lifted from a third person’s blog. Or post a Youtube video of an obscure song, slap on a title with ‘Barack Obama’ or ‘US presidential election’ in it, and – wait, look what’s just happened. The blogosphere is going crazy over your astute juxtaposition of the word ‘Obama’ and the song ‘Bend Me, Shape Me’ by the Amen Corner. You’ve just attracted ecstatic comments from the two hundred readers you’d hoped and failed to move with your turgid four-thousand word post about learning to forgive yourself. Guess that cat blood ain’t so thin after all!
- For God’s sake, cut down on your adjectives! They’re extraneous, superfluous, juvenile and just plain superfluous. Overuse of adjectives on your blog will make you sound like a teenager. Whenever I read a blog loaded with adjectives I’m like, “Whatever!”
- If you’re a teenage blogger, go crazy with those adjectives!
- Nothing bores a reader as much as repetition, except maybe self-contradiction.
- Blogging requires some computer know-how. Technical tip: if you’re having any sort of computer trouble whatsoever, turn your computer off, then turn it back on again. Voila!
- Adjectives – just cut ‘em down! Nothing bores a reader as much as too many adjectives.
- Don’t over-commit. As a blogger who literally reaches a number of reader, I've learned to honour my responsibilities, and not make promises on which I'll have to renege. I don't want them to think I'm a lying, unreliable schmuck!
- Join me in the future for the remaining 992 professional blogging tips!
Next post: 101 ways to enjoy your career, part 2. Apologies to you guys who've been waiting some months for this one.
To read 101 Ways to enjoy your career, part 1, click here. You might learn something you didn’t know about the US presidential contenders!
