What the Well-Bred Blog is Wearing

In my three short months of blogging I have been amazed and pleased at the power of this particular medium. In a sense Blogs are today what web sites were 8 or 10 years ago. As people get more and more comfortable using cyber-space as an information, education and business medium (most people are already pretty comfortable with it as an entertainment medium), blogs are gaining power in their ability to attract attention.

A lot of people like active content. Web sites are good but, unless there is a reason to return to them on a regular basis, they can be easily forgotten. Blogs, particularly blogs attached to web sites, solve that problem. In three months this blog has more than tripled the traffic on my sites and has developed a regular - and growing - following. I am humbled and grateful!

Consequently, there are now web sites that publish guidelines and tips for creating successful blogs. One that I read recently is Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. In it he gives tips and tricks on how to use sites and blogs, etc. Since I am now a convert to the blog universe and its power I decided to follow a few of his guidelines.

Expanding my biography was hard. Originally I had just put “Read my blog, that will be more than you want to know” which was sufficiently flippant and vague for me. However, I can see his point. If I am going to keep writing posts about writing, design, and art, it certainly is understandable that people reading would want to know my background for being such a blowhard. Updating my picture to one taken a couple months ago was easy enough and, in typical fashion, I couldn’t resist funking it up a bit - I am, after all, primarily a digital artist.

When I check the stats pages of my web hosting service, which I do nearly every day, I can see which posts are being read the most, which are being linked to from another source, which are being bookmarked, and fed to other sites. It stands to reason these posts have an appeal and should not be buried forever in the archives so making a “classic hits” section makes perfect sense. I am working on that.

Similarly defining subject matter is important. Without a sense of what the blog is about, readers will get confused and lose interest, Nielsen says. I write mostly about books, writing and the writing life but add in blogs about other arts, life in Gloucester (a town steeped in the arts), and knitting. One of the things that has impressed me since starting this is how many knitters are also writers. I get a lot of email about that and it makes perfect sense to me. Knitting is a form of active meditation that is perfect for writers who need time to let their brains run wild.

Finally, there is the advice to stay aware of the quality of content. Unlike message boards and discussion groups, blogs are not appropriate places for flaming. Flamers need to be deleted as soon as they show up. But, more importantly, there is the need to stay aware of one’s own presence. Nielsen says “write as though you are writing for your next boss” - or, as my mother used to say, “Behave yourself, people are looking at you!” Blogs can serve a lot of purposes and they vary in quality as much as anything else does. But using a blog to establish a presence, build credibility, and reach out to a particular audience requires standards of behavior - something the internet, and society in general, cannot help but benefit by.

So, gradually, I am learning how to do this. It is absolutely fascinating. More than anything I am appreciative of the people who take time in their day to stop by here for a minute or two and read what I have to say. They are my inspiration to keep improving.

Thanks for reading.