Let’s wrap this “Beginning Blogging” series up, shall we? You wanna blog already and I’m bored with myself just writing this, can’t imagine if you’re having to read it.
You have a blog, you have a theme, you even know what gadgets (or widgets as they’re known in the WordPress world) are, and you’re ready to write something. Ready to wow your fans. Ready to greet the masses. First let’s look at what’s considered to be p.c. in the bloggy universe, ‘k?
It’s been said many a place that if you don’t have a visually pleasing place to land, then well, people won’t land. They’ll click over, be bored or feel accosted and move on. Without having ever read your amazing words. And you do have amazing words. We just want to gather people to your blog and keep them there to read them. What’s considered visually appealing in the mom blog world is soft colors. It’s true. Besides my own instinct to run away when I see black (or dark any color) for a background with white (or heaven forbid a color) font on it, I’ve seen post after post of other bloggers say let’s just not do that, okay? People don’t like it. They also don’t like busy. I’ve tried it, I’ve asked, again, if you have all these bright colors and all these great ideas spilling out from all these places people will leave. Even Ann at A Holy Experience recently changed her all black background and white font because people asked.
Also, reconsider the music on your site. Some of you, my dear already blogging friends, have music. I still love you, really I do. But every time I click over and I have forgotten to turn down the volume and Baby who is asleep on my chest jumps from the sound I secretly want to curse. Even if it’s inspiring music. It makes me want to run away.
While we’re talking about faux pas let’s talk about the captcha word-type-in-you’re-not-a-spam-robot things. Please turn them off. I really don’t think they’re doing you that much good, you’ll want to moderate your comments at least once a day anyway – just report the spam and delete it. When people have to jump through a lot of hoops to leave you a comment, most of the time they won’t. Y’all don’t get mad at me, I’m just tryin’ to help, I promise.
Okay, that’s done.
Whew.
Now let’s talk about your actual posts. What’re ya gonna write? Well first of all I break the number one rule all.the.time. You’re really not supposed to write over like 900 words per post. Probably way less than that. I can’t remember because I refuse to follow it. I do. I’m verbose, I’m convinced it’s why I fail at Twitter. Who can say that little at one time? But I thought you should know what other people say you should do.
When you go to write be sure it’s something you want out there for all the world to see for ever more. Be sure. When I write posts that feel uneasy to me or that I think might in some small way offend someone.. I write it out. And then save the draft without publishing it. I sit on it for however long it takes me to pray through it, ask Matt about it, and get okay with it. Sometimes that’s never. I have 30 something drafts sitting in my dashboard right now. Sometimes it takes nearly a year to get ready to post it. I would say err on the side of not saying anything. Don’t write out your anger at your husband, don’t write out your snarky feelings toward the grocery story clerks. Sit on it, pray about it, wait. Ask yourself who you’re reaching, why you’re writing it, who it’s gonna help. Don’t stir up strife just to have debate and drama. Unless that’s your whole gig and that’s what your blog is about.
Which leads right into.. be prepared for crazy commenters. They’re out there. They will say anything. Especially if they feel like they have an arguer with which to argue. My daddy used to always say don’t get in a piss fight with a skunk. It’s good advice. If you do find yourself in one with one, pray, be graceful, ask for wisdom. Proceed with caution. And move on past the moment.
When writing content.. only write your thoughts. If you’ve recently read something quote worthy give full credit to that person with a link back to them. If you want someone to read more than just a snippet or a one sentence quote then give a little info about what you’re linking to and then link back to the original content. Here’s why. First, it’s stealing. Second, good content creates a buzz, gets people talking about it. And the author wants “traffic” or lots of people to come to their site to read their stuff. If their stuff is on your site then it’s sending people to someone else’s site. And that’s just not cool. Or legal. Or fair. To “link to someone” highlight words you want to link up (and make it applicable to what you’re linking – like the site or the person’s name – it helps your searchability stats way more than “go here” or “click this”) then go up to that little chain icon in your dashboard and click it. It will ask you for an address, go up to that “http://” place up there of the site you want to link to, copy that, and then paste it into the address bar of the linky icon thing. Become familiar with that, people like linky love. You’ll want to be linked to as well, and linking others will lead to you being linked. A “scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” kind of thing.
You’ll want pictures. Well, it doesn’t matter if you, personally, want pictures, what matters is that your readers will want pictures. Especially when you’re as wordy as me. It’s like reading a newspaper with no photos. bor-ing. Even if your photos have nothing to do with the content, anything to look at and draw your attention down through all these boring words is better than nothing. Again, don’t steal the pictures. They must be yours, even if they’re just from your phone camera. Also, be aware what you title your pictures is what makes them searchable in places like Google images. It’s how I discovered that those stupid per.ver.ts were coming to my site that time. That picture of BigMan was titled “N@ke.d boy” (without all the symbols). They were searching for images with that title and they found mine. Even though it showed nothing it implied it by the name of my picture. So be aware, you may never use your kids’ names on the blog, but if you save your pictures with their names it will be visible to others when they scroll over the pictures. Try it, see what I’ve named these photos. See?
Shoots, once again, I didn’t get to the money making part. Much like blogging, the money takes time to get to. So, as much as I wanted to wrap this up today I think there will have to be one more post in the series.
You have a blog, it looks pretty, you’re ready for your readers, you have content!! Hit that publish button and get ready for tomorrow. Where I’ll tell you how to make a few friends and a little money blogging.
(If you haven’t been following this series, be sure to catch Part 1 (How I Got Where I Am), Part 2 (Decide Who You Are), Part 3 (The Technical Side of Getting Set Up), and Part 5 (Making Friends and Money).
