Compulsive Blogging Part 1
Blogging is all the rage right now and you might feel that you want to get involved too. It is a great and rewarding form of expression but it can also be a big flop or waisted effort.
Before you dip into the world of blogging or before getting deeper in than you already might be you must first ask yourself a few basic questions:
Why are you blogging?
- Maybe you have a particular interest in a subject that you feel you have a good knowledge of and would like to share.
- Perhaps it’s a good way to stay in touch with friends and family at a distance.
- It’s possible that you are passionate about something or someone and want to express your dedication as a fan.
Whatever your reason, it’s important that you have one. You need a good enough reason for yourself to carry on blogging without faltering. You must have reason enough to stay the course.
How often do you want to contribute?
All too often we set goals for our blogging activity that are far beyond what we can actually keep up with. Set a goal of blogging frequency that is suitable to your schedule and lifestyle. This planned frequency does not need to be common knowledge, but more often than not, your readers will catch on to any kind of rhythm to your posts. If you start off posting once per day, then once a week and eventually once a month, the public will pick up on this subconsciously and view your blog as “dying”.
If, however, you set a steady pace at the get go, like once a week or biweekly for example, then this is what your reader will come to expect and await each “episode” with anticipation.
Who do wish to be?
It sounds like an odd question, but it is very valid. Your personality will shine through in your writing so it is important to think about how to present your persona to your readers. How you write says a lot about who you are whether you know it or not.
It happens all too often; what we intend in our writing is not always what is read by the reader, so extra care should be given when reading back your posts to yourself. Consider how your comments or remarks might be received by the public.
What are your goals?
Even if you are blogging for yourself, you need to set some goals. Whether your looking for a certain size readership, looking to reach a given number of visits of even if you are just looking at exercising your creative muscle to improve your writing skills, a goal is an important milestone to strive for and drive you on.
How will you measure success?
How you confirm that your goals have been met is almost as important as having them in the first place. Maybe your goal is to have an article get noticed from time to time, then perhaps one of your articles be featured on Digg is affirmation enough that your goal has been met.
Then again, if you feel you are a poor writer who has a goal to improve, then you might view a positive comment about an article you’ve penned to be an ample measure of that success.
It’s all about your mindset. You can’t go blindly into blogging if you’ve nothing to add to the realm of blogging on some level, be it personal, family or professional. Some of the most successful blogs have a very narrow field of interest or have a voice of strong opinion. Think about what you really want to write about, and then, in your mind, map out all the things you might have to say on that topic. If you had trouble coming up with 6 possible posts you might find that blogging is not for you.
In part 2 we will talk about the methodology I use when blogging.