Are You Giving Out Bad Blogging Advice?
A bad case of stupid seems to be going around.
Some people blame it on Mercury being in retrograde, but not me. I just call it people being people.
Does that make me less compassionate or more realistic? I don’t know but I do know that telling people to only write when they have something to say is a great way to kill productivity.
The intention is good and the idea is solid but good intentions don’t always lead to good results. Neville Chamberlain had good intentions when he rolled over for Hitler but students of history know that instead of saving lives it led to more bloodshed.
Writing Is A Habit/Skill
Writing is a skill and like any other it can be improved through exercise. It is also a habit and like any other habit it is impacted by how you approach it.
I don’t have hard numbers to share but my best guess is if you let yourself develop a habit of only blogging when you have something to say you might not blog with the sort of frequency that allows you to build a readership and improve your skills.
That is because many if not most of us are fighting our internal editor, the one that says our words aren’t as eloquent as others and our ideas aren’t as interesting.
One of the best and most important things you can do to improve as a writer is to write daily. One of the best and most important things you can do as a blogger is to think about topics to write about each day.
The idea here is to train yourself to write when you don’t feel like writing and to learn how to develop ideas for posts even when you don’t feel like doing so.
If you take these ideas to heart and work upon them you will start to see progress and improvement in both areas. The writing will become easier and so will coming up with ideas for blog posts.
There are those people who disagree and will tell you my suggestions is off base because it might impact the quality of your content and that lesser quality content will have a negative effect upon finding readers.
They are missing the boat.
Quality content is always important but the person who doesn’t perform regular maintenance on their home risks more. The degradation and deterioration of skills doesn’t happen in one fell swoop but over time.
Think of it as being similar to regular check ups at the dentist/doctor.
You don’t have to floss or brush your teeth but if you don’t there is no doubt that sooner or later your teeth and gums will show issues that you could have avoided.
Are You Giving Out Bad Blogging Advice?
Are you giving out bad blogging advice is the subject line of an email I received not long ago but it is not what made me decide to write this today.
Blog posts about blogging are the low hanging fruit of the blogosphere. There are 1,982,382 of them and thousands more that are created by the minute but they also happen to be among the most highly trafficked.
So when I took a look at my stats the other day I noticed there had been a small drop off and wondered what the cause was. It is normal to see some play in the readers because their time is limited and unless you consistently provide them with content that is entertaining/educational some will drop off.
Sometimes it is because they are bored or feel like they have learned all they can. Sometimes it is because they just don’t have time to read any more and they go elsewhere.
While it is nice to know the reasons why they leave you can’t or won’t always know.
Anyway I didn’t take a survey or try to figure out what caused the drop this time. I just accepted that it happened and decided to see if writing a post about blogging would pull some new readers in.
If things go as I hope some of them will read these words and like what they see. They’ll wonder who writes about a bad case of stupid and do they have a closet filled with gold nuggets they wish to share.
The answer is I write about bad cases of stupid going around and I do have gold nuggets in the closet but you’ll have to keep reading to decide if it is 14K or some synthetic variation.
If you ask me I’ll promise to share the diamonds too but sometimes you’ll find the cubic zirconium but only because I am the guy who writes daily and sometimes you strikeout while swinging for the fences.
Join The Journey
But if you are interested in joining me and the others in the journey we’d sure love to have you. The follow me buttons are all over the place and if you leave comments I promise to answer them.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sebastian Daniels October 20, 2014 at 10:13 pm
Hehe. I love the advice. I also found that writing everyday helps you improve and keeps your skills sharp. There is a lot of different blogging advice out there. Are the people who have the most success blogging the ones who blog out blogging and social media marketing? Probably.
The JackB October 21, 2014 at 10:47 am
@sebastiandaniels:disqus I often wonder how many of the people who are giving out blog advice are making money. I am not talking about a couple of bucks, I mean real money. The kind that does more than pay for a cup of coffee.
Stan Faryna October 20, 2014 at 8:23 pm
The blue footer is so much better. For sake of design considerations, I might limit the length of the email field and subscribe button to the same length as the text, Subscribe to Blog via Email.
The JackB October 21, 2014 at 6:50 am
@faryna:disqus The subscribe box is a widget. I need to research how to shrink the box. It would look better if I did that. I don’t know if there is a CSS or HTML trick I can use to do that.
Larry October 20, 2014 at 2:16 pm
I’m not into blogging everyday. I do, however, write nearly every day and would like to make it an everyday habit. I agree with you that it is the only way to get better.
The JackB October 21, 2014 at 6:48 am
@Lardavbern:disqus If you are in interested in improving as a writer where you do it is of less importance than where. I tend to do most of mine online because it is where I am most likely to follow through on doing it.
Seth Burleigh October 20, 2014 at 12:01 pm
Spoken like a true vet.
The JackB October 21, 2014 at 6:46 am
@sburleigh8:disqus Or a cranky old man. 🙂