Category: blogs

Somehow, the 10^th anniversary of my blog passed without notice. I wrote my very first blog post back on October 25, 2005. Back then I was on LiveJournal, but all of those posts found their way here when I converted to WordPress a few years later. Ten years, and 6,032 public posts later, I’m still having fun writing here. Now and then I hear that blogging is dead. Maybe that is true, but it is not dead here. And I’m not sure I believe it is dead in other quarters. My Feedly and Medium are always full of interesting reads.

A few days ago, a coworker of mine asked if she could get some advice on blogging and social media. I don’t know that I would call myself an expert on either subject. But I offered some lessons I’ve learned over the last ten years. Here is some of the advice I offered on blogging.

1. Post your best work

I’ve tried to get better at this over the years. For a long time I did my blog writing without a net. That is, I typed what I wanted to write directly into WordPress and then pressed Publish. These days, I write these posts in Scrivener, and I schedule them, often days in advance. I don’t rush to get them out. I re-read them and tweak them. I spend time trying to get them as clear as possible before I publish them. It my way of posting my best work.

For someone just starting out, I can’t emphasize how important posting your best work is. It is like submitting a story for publication. You always submit your best work. With the blog, there is not editor or gate-keeper to provide a quality check. Instead, there is an audience, and you want to make a good impression with that audience. The best way to do this is by posting your best work.

It is okay to write stuff and not post it. Looking through the things I have in my Scrivener blog project, I see five pieces I’ve written in the last month that I decided either not to post, or decided that they needed more work before I post them. For me, this is a sea-change from the days when I felt compelled to post something the second I’d finished typing the last word.

When I get asked about blogging, I am often asked about how to get people to read my blog. My response is always post your best work. If it is good, people will read it.

2. Consistency is more important than frequency

My friend wanted to know how frequently to post on her newly created blog. I told her that my experience is that consistency is more important than frequency. If you decide to post once a week, be sure to hit that mark every week—at the same time, if possible. If readers enjoy what you write, they’ll look for it regularly, and there is a schedule they can count on, regardless of the frequency, they’ll know when to look for it.

Consistency is more than when or how often you post. It is also means maintaining a consistent quality to the posts. Not every post will be a winner, but don’t forget the first piece of advice: post your best work.

Knowing how long it takes to produce your best work will help you figure out how frequently you can maintain consistency. If it takes you a month to produce a good post, then don’t try posting more than once a month until you are comfortable with the schedule. If it gets easier, you can increase the frequency of your posts, but only if you can avoid sacrificing quality. Quality is the most import part of writing.

3. Be patient

This blog was, by no means, an overnight success. In fact, I never really cared much about the site statistics until I’d been blogging for 5 years. In 2010, I started following the stats for the blog. I was getting something like 30 visitors each day. In 2011 (I think) I set a goal: could I improve the quality of what I was writing enough to triple that number and get 100 visitors each day? I had a year to do it, and I succeeded. From 2011 – 2014 things kept increasing, and I peaked at around a daily average of 4,000 visitors/day. In 2015, the numbers started falling. You know why? Because I was focused on other things, and I was no longer being consistent in when I posted.

These days, I’m back to posting regularly with a consistent schedule (the main post at 9 am each morning, with an occasional announcement or supplemental post in the afternoon), and guess what? The numbers are back up. Since December 1, I’ve been seeing 4,000-5,000 visitors each day on average. Here is what patience looks like on a timeline:

My point here is not to brag. On the contrary, it took me 5 years of posting on consistent schedule, the best possible work I could write, day-in and day-out to get from 30 visitors a day, to 4,000 visitors a day. There was no magic bullet. There was no trick that I tried to get a bigger audience beyond trying to write interesting posts.

I have been blogging since late 2005, about 9-1/2 years. Over the course of that time, I’ve written 5,546 posts (5,547 if you count this one). That amounts to more than one-and-a-half posts per day, every day during my run thus far. I don’t even want to try to count how many words it amounts to.

In all the time I’ve been blogging, I don’t think I’ve ever written about my blogging influences. I’ve written about writers who have influenced me, but I’ve never gotten specific and identified those writers who influenced my blogging. I thought I’d do that today.

Compared to other forms of writing, blogging is still relatively young. The people who have been doing it the longest have only been doing it for 15 years or so. At first glance, this narrows the scope of influencers, but the truth is there is only one blogger out there that has influenced my approached to blogging. The two other people who have influenced my approach and style, while both writers, were never known for their blogs.

My style and approach to blogging has evolved a great deal since the early years. I used to rant a lot more than I do now. I used to write about things that no one else cared about. Over time, I’ve narrowed my focus, and I’ve done my level best to cut out the rants. I was reading the latest issue of Baseball Digest last night and came across this remarkable passage by the magazine’s editor, Bob Kuenster:

At the start of my career in covering Major League Baseball, a great writer told me to report on the good of the game. It has so many great things and good people that you should focus on that end of the spectrum and leave the controversial garbage for the hardcore news people to write about… fans want to read about the good in the game.

While I’d never thought about it in explicit terms, this is exactly what I’ve been evolving toward here on this blog. Writing about the good, whether it is in technology, science fiction, writing, family, or whatever it is that I happen to be writing about. I don’t always achieve this, but it is what I aim for. This isn’t to say that I don’t recognize the other end of the spectrum, but as Kuenster says, there are plenty of other people writing about that stuff. No need to add my voice to it.

Here are the three writers who have influenced my approach to blogging and writing about the good of the game.

John Scalzi

John Scalzi has been blogging at Whatever for 15 years. He’s one of the originals. And while John doesn’t always write about the good of the game, he does several things that has influenced me on this blog over the years:

• He writes engaging posts.
• He writes with clarity.
• He writes consistently.
• He writes in a way that encourages discussion and dialog.

Each of these things are something I have worked toward over the years, and John’s example has been foremost in my mind when doing this. Engaging posts are important for the same reason that hooks in piece of short fiction are important. You want to engage the reader and get them interested. Clarity is also important. With a potential audience as large as the entire Internet, it is important to try to be as clear as possible to avoid confusion and chaos. I think John does a great job of this, and I’ve worked hard to establish clarity in my posts.

Isaac Asimov

If you look at the thousands of essays that Isaac Asimov wrote over decades, and combine that with his colloquial style, you could make the case that Asimov was what we might call a “proto-blogger.”

Over the years, I think I’ve managed to read nearly every essay that Asimov has written, and his influence on my style here on the blog is undeniable. There are three things that I think I’ve taken away from Asimov when it comes to blogging:

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