the sins of blogging

yesterday – 27 oct. – was a month after my blog anniversary (some call it blogoversary. people are so fond of coining new words nowadays). this means to say I had been blogging for roughly 400 days. and i notice that i had made 422 posts up-to-date. hmm… not bad at least can say one post one day, but of course no, no i did not blog everyday. some days i made more than one post.

now after a year of blogging i wonder to myself did i do anything wrong? silly girl! of course i did. what i meant was, what did i do wrong? so i began to google for the sins of blogging and came up with some pretty interesting points.

first and foremost, this came from john hawkins of the blog right wing news. it was an old post so some of you might had already came across it. anyway, john came up with the 3 topmost cardinal sins of blogging. these sins only applies to bloggers who wants to build a bigger audience to their blogs, so he said.

john hawkins had said “if you’re a blogger with talent and patience & you avoid those three ‘cardinal sins’, you will eventually build an audience.”

i’m sure most of us bloggers do want an audience. heck, the number of ping to project petaling street (PPS) is evident enough. (btw, i don’t ping all my posts to PPS – only selected ones.) so i present to you here, the 3 cardinal sins of blogging (in italic, followed by my comments). let’s hear from you, whether i’m guilty of the sins or you, as a blogger are!

1) First and foremost, most unsuccessful bloggers just don’t write enough material. Either they don’t post enough links or they don’t rant/write enough essays. If you look at successful blogs around the net you’re almost always going to find that they put a LOT of work and time into their writing/linking. You’re going to have to do that too if you’re going to succeed.

that’s true. just look at for example, jeff ooi’s blog. a lot of time had been spent researching for materials and he did provide lots of links in his posts. another example, the croc man, buaya69, though what he blogs on are entirely different from jeff, i see he did provide lots of links to his posts. buaya, you must have put in a LOT of work and time. pass lah some time to me and pray that i’m hardworking. hehe.

of course this also depends on what kind of stories you blog on. some don’t need links at all or some only need one.

2) Inconsistency kills. Vacations & week-ends off are fine, but just randomly taking days off or making minimal numbers of posts will cost you readers. For the most part, we may be dishing out “free ice cream” (writing for free), but our customers still want a consistent supply. If they don’t get it, they’ll wander off and find one. So instead of having a reader who hits your page every day, they may just check in once every couple of weeks to see what they’ll find. That’s not the way to build up a consistent group of readers.

yep. that’s why i try my best to post everyday, if not every 2 days. if i don’t have materials to post, i’ll put in ‘fillers’ e.g. quotes, jokes or show you cute pics. oops. corrections there. it’s not “i don’t have materials to post” but rather “i don’t have time to post good materials”.

3) You have got to be distinctive enough so that readers can pick you out of the herd. If there are 50 other blogs out there talking about the same things you’re talking about and saying roughly the same things — well to put it bluntly, why should a reader bother with reading your blog?

er… i don’t quite agree with this. true in one sense but then not true in another. if a group of bloggers blogs on current issues, then all of them might, most of the time, usually blog on the same topics now and then. it’s how they present it that made them distinctive.

i don’t think i’m that distinctive since in the sense of talking about the same things. as i mentioned in my anniversary post, i try to blog on both categories – current issue (esp. political) and personal (include observation in life), whereas you see a number of bloggers either only blog on current issues or only on personal matters. i feel this way i might command a better audience than if i were to blog on one category only.

to be continued tomorrow, with my own sins of blogging.