Blogging Thoughts, Tips And Advice

I may have spoken about this topic in the past. If I have and you remember, please forgive me. Say a prayer. After a couple thousand posts, I don't know what I'm writing or saying anymore.

There are a great number of sites offering blogging tips. Some are good and others just repeat the same storyline. They all add up to one thing to me: they make money and I don't no matter how much I try.

At some point you just shrug your shoulders and move on. Which brings me to my first piece of advice: Why do you blog? Is it to make money? To make a difference? Offer insights? Piss off your boss? A little of everything?

Personally, of course I would like to make money but it's no longer a goal of mine. I just write because I have a thirst for knowledge and love to scribble. "They" say the rest is supposed to take care of itself.

Next is about the content itself. I avoid useless gossip (same on my sports site intersportswire.com sports sites are filled with gossip gone mad) so prevalent today. I trust myself to offer original content and posts/ideas smart people could enjoy. If I can get one person going to bed wondering what I look or sound like then I did my job. Actually, I would prefer it if it spurned either debate or pause for thought. Point being, aliens could be reading so sit straight and think hard.

The main advice given by marketers is to write about what people are looking for. This means sizing up what the masses and sometimes pandering to the lowest common denominator. Some people are good at this. Some bloggers are 'Celine Dion" bloggers. They have talent but have no qualms about writing crap so long as the traffic is high. Others are more like "Bruce Springsteen" and still others like "Velvet Underground." You get the picture.

All should know how to manipulate keywords and visiting sites covering popular people and issues.

The problem for me on this point is often I could care less about most of what makes "news." Sure, I could blog about George Clooney dating a skank but it doesn't fit my philosophy. Then again, I'm little extreme. Not too many people are punching in "South Sea Bubble" these days even in today's financial climate. I do try and find some pseudo-balance but in the end I just go with what I like and know. Screw the marketers and their minions.

Another conundrum is matching your interests with Google. Being favorably ranked in their index is a fact of life; like death, jello and taxes. Again, I'm too daft to understand how this works but I do try and follow some simple principles: post every day, use long-tail keywords, try and be relevant etc. blah, etc.

One important aspect of blogging is to get your name out there. This entails joining social networking sites and the like. I'm not big into selling my work (***VISIT e-Talian!!!***It's the best site in the Milky Way!) by submitting them either. Moreover, I'm no fan of rating blog posts. What I do is join a few, quit a few; to keep the blog "alive" so to speak. I try and comment from time to time on other blogs (those I like and respect of course) as a means to a) impart lame wisdom and b) show people "hey, I have a blog too!"

What I like about not going overboard (how many times have you seen absolutely terrible posts get plastered everywhere?) is letting the "blog and internet" market decide if they like you. Because I don't follow all the rules of engagement (I'm a rebel that way), whenever I get a comment or linked back I can strongly assume there's quality in the comment or link. It means someone liked your stuff - or, cynically speaking, feels the content is acceptable enough to make money off it. It may be an impractical way to handle things and it hurts traffic but I prefer quality over quantity.

I'd rather have 100 people a day staying an average of 2 minutes on my blog than 500 staying 20 seconds.

Last, I always make it a point to respond to people who take the time to comment here. It's a sort of social politesse for me. I never let emails go unanswered (unless it's not spam or written by a Mugabe/Castro/Chavez flunkie. Then I just laugh while sipping some latte.)

This is the best I've got in five years of blogging.