seven things I want to remember to tell you about blogging

Here's a short list of topics to cover, with some pithy quotes and links to other things I've written (or need to write).

Seven things I want to remember to tell you about blogging, mostly things that people have told me along the way. The first thing (thing 0) is very easy, the Blogger's Secret: write about something twice a day for six months, and you will be an expert on it. That is easier said than done.

1. Find a voice. This is the hardest part of writing; you want to sound like a human being, not a press release and not wire service copy and not marketing copy. Be who you are, because things that are standardized are boring, boring, boring.

2. Spelling matters. Find one of the many ways to quickly spell check your posts before they go out. Find someone to read your posts after they go up and tell you if something doesn't look right or sound right. Newspapers are regularly ridiculed for even a single typo; you are not writing for print, but expect the same level of criticism from ex-journalists who love to edit copy.

3. Brainstorm a bunch of headlines. One of the best things I've ever done when starting a new blog on a new topic is to spend some time with pen and paper making a long list of titles that sound like they would make good entries, even if I didn't know at the time what I wanted to say or the details that I'd fill in.  As a blogger, you get a special grace period that journalists don't often get to ask questions that you don't know the answers to.

4.  Pointless numbered lists. If you can't write a big, long, 7000 word all-inclusive essay about something, don't worry.  One very reasonable format that can be overused but is often handy is the numbered list where you bounce around from one idea to another idea without needing to deal with telling a single story.  Readers will pick out the piece that's relevant and note that, and if the list is too long it still works for later reference or search.

5.  Cherish your comments. People will comment on your posts, if you are lucky. Even if you are not lucky, you can make your own luck by commenting on your own posts, adding in the pieces that you found later or that changed after the original post.  It always helps to tell people what you wrote, e.g. by sending a link via email or twitter, so that you can capture some of the reaction.

6.  Be interested.  Don't force yourself to write about something that doesn't interest you, just in the interests of filling up space.  If you don't have any new ideas on a topic, a perfectly good perspective on the world is to find some people who do and to quote from them (and link to them) to give you some material to work from.   Done well, even a simple list of interesting things that crossed your path will be worth sharing.

7.  Every blog should have its reader.  You are writing words for people to react to, and it may be easiest if this is new to you to fix one person in your mind who you are writing to or for, and write to them.

More reading, from people who have been through this before:

Missy Caulk on writing for real estate blogs.

Muphry's Law: if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.

Cory Doctorow's sage blogging advice for newbies, via Sarah Granger.

On metrics and pointless numbered bullshit.

Much more on comments.

Edited September 25, 2010, to omit some needless words, fix some HTML, and follow some of my own advice.

Comments

[Zachary Campau]

I think the "Be Interested" advice is especially important - if you're not interested in what you're writing about, don't expect anyone else to be, either. If you're interested, there's a better chance your curiosity will come through, and you may even peak the curiosity of your reader. (I believe this advice applies to all forms of communication)

[Nathan Bomey]

Ed -- couldn't agree more! Great points all around.

[Stiennon]

Another point: re-use your thoughts! If you write an article somewhere, a long email, or a book, re-purpose it to your blog. Embellish it, color it, link it. It works the other way too. Take a blog post and turn it into the basis for a white paper, column, or letter to the editor. Your words are precious, use them wisely!

-Stiennon

[Edward Vielmetti]

Richard - thanks for reminding me about the reuse of words. If you have put together enough of them, you should be able to string together something new that doesn't require a whole new train of thought, just a structure to hand together a lot of paragraphs that are already pretty polished.

I am looking at the "spelling matters" piece of this, and notice with some dismay that I wrote down "there's lots" in the original. Fixed.